[Reporter’s View] Handling AI-collected ‘cancer info’

requires caution

Medical AI company Lunit announced on the 5th that it will be participating in the establishment of an internet-only bank.

 

Lunit will join the U-BANK consortium, including Lendit, Jobis & Villains, Travel Wallet, and Hyundai Marine & Fire Insurance, to establish Korea’s fourth internet-only bank.

 

An interesting part of the information is the Lunit’s role within the consortium.

 

“The company aims to develop insurance services personalized to individuals and accurate,” Lunit announced.

 

Lunit plans to utilize the data gathered from its ‘Lunit INSIGHT,’ the company’s primary product of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled cancer detection, to develop insurance products with exceptional accuracy.

 

It is expected that Lunit’s business operations will expand.

 

Previously, Lunit’s business model involved receiving patients’ medical files containing cancer-diagnosis information.

 

The company then uses artificial intelligence to analyze this Big Data, allowing them to determine whether a patient has a cancer from a single MRI image.

 

With a current approach to expanding their business into developing insurance services and sales, companies involved in the consortium will likely take on different roles.

 

The consortium is expected to operate the business by Lunit gathering an enormous amount of data from media files of cancer diagnoses and relaying those data to the consortium’s insurance company (Hyundai Marine & Fire Insurance), which will utilize the data to develop insurance products.

 

Then, the consortium’s newly established internet-only bank will sell those products in a Banccasurance-like manner.

 

There are concerns regarding the possibility of leaks when sensitive cancer personal information is utilized as an ingredient to develop insurance product.

 

Under the current privacy protection law, consortiums like Lunit must obtain consent from each patient to develop and sell insurance products, clearly specifying the purpose and duration of use.

 

The collected information must go through a separate processing step to ensure it cannot identify individuals.

 

To transfer the data collected by Lunit to insurance companies or banks, they must also obtain third-party data-sharing consent.

 

Lunit appears to be prepared to obtain consent.

 

“When we receive patient data, personal information is anonymized.

 

If we actively pursue business, we will properly manage to obtain patient consent related to utilizing personal information,” a Lunit representative stated.

 

“Currently, we have only decided to invest, and we do not plan to change article of association to include insurance business at this time.” Even though Lunit provided these explanations, a feeling of uneasiness persists.

 

This is because incidents of patient data leaks continue to occur in Korea.

 

In July of last year, 17 university hospitals in Korea leaked sensitive patient information.

 

Between April 2018 and January 2020, the hospitals leaked 185,271 cases of patient information.

 

It was discovered that hospital staff or employees of pharmaceutical companies accessed the hospital system and took pictures or downloaded patient prescription information.

 

Several years ago, there was a large-scale data leak in which IMS Health Korea and Korea Pharmaceutical Information Center (KIPIS) leaked patients’ personal information.

 

At that time, the personal information of 43.99 million patients was leaked, amounting to 4.7 billion cases.

 

In the era of Big Data, information is equivalent to goods.

 

If a company decides to transform information into goods, like ‘alchemy,’ it must establish a safety net to protect individuals or patients who own personal data.

 

This does not entail distrusting the corporation’s security policy of handling personal information or criticizing the company’s business model.

 

However, companies must be highly cautious when collecting and utilizing patient information.