Whistleblowers allege U of T data project collected 600K patient records without consent – GLOBAL
January 23, 2023
Ontario’s privacy commissioner is investigating a sweeping data project at the University of Toronto that is alleged to have collected over 600,000 electronic medical records without patient consent or knowledge.
Filed last summer by a group of concerned doctors in the GTA, a privacy complaint alleges the University of Toronto Practice-Based Research Network, a decade-old project known by the futuristic acronym UTOPIAN, has collected entire medical records (EMRs) from over 1,400 family physicians as part of a “massive data grab.”
Researchers with UTOPIAN asked family doctors to submit entire patient charts under the “guise” of a research study, according to the complaint. The project has collected well over 613,000 EMRs.
