The Indian state of Tamil Nadu is rolling out something never attempted before—with the help of a global tech giant.
For the state's 80 million residents:
• It wants to collect their blood samples.
• Check their blood pressure
• Screen them for cancer and kidney diseases
All of it at their doorstep.
And guess who wants to have a foot in the door?
The U.S. tech giant Google.
Google has been working with Tamil Nadu for a few years to create a population health registry (PHR) to aid this plan.
But while the state calls this association 'informal', Google has spent US$3 million in funding organisations building the PHR.
Why has Google gone all the way out? What does it hope to achieve?
And from a citizen's point of view, will the aggregated sensitive data be stored safely? Especially given that India does not have a data protection law yet.