More than 3,000 patients who visited Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center this year are dealing with the fallout of an employee’s digital error that exposed sensitive health information to a public artificial intelligence tool.
The incident happened in late September after a worker mistakenly uploaded a spreadsheet with patient information to an unnamed third-party platform that was not approved by the hospital for that use, a Johns Hopkins news release said.
“Johns Hopkins is committed to maintaining the privacy and security of its patients’ information and is taking this incident very seriously,” the release said. “We sincerely regret any inconvenience or concern this may have caused.”
The breach — which impacted the data of 3,182 patients who visited the center from May through September — was discovered during an internal review the same day, and the hospital has started informing those affected.
The sheet contained information about patients’ providers, admission dates, treatment, medications, account numbers and medical records numbers.
It did not have patients’ Social Security numbers, financial accounts or other identifying information, the release said.
After discovering the data breach, administrators began an investigation and worked to address the problem by making the employee remove the prompt, thread and document they put into the AI tool. Johns Hopkins said it reached out to the tool’s parent company, requesting it delete and correct the mistake.
It’s unclear if the employee responsible for the incident will face consequences, but the hospital system said it is reinforcing policy and training on authorized and unapproved tools.
Patients impacted did not begin learning about the misstep until last week, after Johns Hopkins concluded its internal review and began mailing letters to notify them.
Patients who faced information exposure were advised to enroll in 12 months of complimentary credit monitoring. The center also set up a call center to answer questions. That hotline can be reached at 1-833-931-7766.