Facebook junks project to collect patients' health data: Report
San Francisco, April 6: In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data breach, Facebook has reportedly suspended a research project where it was in touch with several major US hospitals to collect data about their patients.
According to a report in CNBC late Thursday, Facebook aimed to build profiles of patients and help the hospitals, including Stanford Medical School and American College of Cardiology, figure out which patients may need special care or treatment.
"This work has not progressed past the planning phase, and we have not received, shared, or analysed anyone's data," a Facebook spokesperson told CNBC.
A Facebook statement said: "Last year Facebook began discussions with leading medical institutions to explore whether scientific research using anonymised Facebook data could help the medical community advance our understanding in this area.
"The project could have raised new concerns about the massive amount of data Facebook collects about its users, and how this data can be used in ways users never expected."
Facebook, however, told The Verge that the patient data would instead be used more generally.
"The project would not attempt to provide health recommendations for specific people. Instead, the focus would be on producing general insights that would help medical professionals take social connectedness into account as they develop treatment or intervention programmes for their patients," a Facebook spokesperson was quoted as saying.
Facebook has admitted that information of up to 87 million people, mostly in the US, may have been improperly shared with the British political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica.
Private data of over 5.6 lakh Indian Facebook users was also compromised by a private marketing firm that later sold the personal details acquired through a quiz app to Cambridge Analytica.
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SIR in Gujarat: More than 17 lakh deceased voters found on electoral rolls
Ahmedabad (PTI): The ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Gujarat has revealed that more than 17 lakh deceased voters were still included in the existing voter list across the state, a release by the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) has stated.
According to the release issued on Thursday, the SIR exercise started in Gujarat on November 4 with booth-level officers (BLOs) distributing enumeration forms in their designated areas.
The campaign will continue till December 11.
"In the last one month, enumeration forms have been distributed to more than five crore voters registered in the 2025 electoral roll. In most of the 33 districts, 100 per cent of the distribution has been completed. Work on digitising the returned forms is currently underway. So far, the digitisation work has been completed in 12 out of 182 assembly constituencies," it said.
These include Dhanera and Tharad of Banaskantha district, Limkheda and Dahod (ST) of Dahod district, Bayad of Aravalli district, Dhoraji, Jasdan and Gondal of Rajkot district, Keshod of Junagadh district, Mehmadabad of Kheda district, Khambhat of Anand district and Jalalpore of Navsari district.
Dang district is at the forefront in this work with 94.35 per cent digitisation of the counting forms, said the release.
"During this exercise, it was revealed that 17 lakh deceased voters were still included in the electoral roll across the state. More than 6.14 lakh voters were found absent from their addresses. It has been noticed that more than 30 lakh voters have permanently migrated," the release said.
BLOs found more than 3.25 lakh voters in the "repeated" category, which means that their names figured at more than one place, the release stated.
