Cases › leaked private data › LR-2026-0338
Ontario hospital AI transcription bot sends confidential patient information to recipients after recording a meeting
Preliminary Why: Publisher not yet named · subject to change
Developing: a major or severe case captured in the last 72 hours. Later changes are logged on the corrections page.
Status: no action reported
No source states: loss or records, developer and model, agent tool, could do, deployer, industry.
Severity major: tier: a regulator is involved (Ontario IPC investigation) and a stated 65 recipients were reached, 12 no longer employed by the hospital
An AI transcription tool, Otter.ai, was installed by a physician on a personal device in September 2024. Through the physician's personal digital calendar it could access a hospital rounds meeting invite, because the organizer had not removed him after he left in June 2023. On 23 September 2024 the tool automatically joined a virtual hepatology rounds meeting attended by hospital physicians. The personal health information of seven patients was discussed. After the meeting, a summary and transcript were automatically emailed to participants, including 65 recipients, 12 of whom no longer worked at the hospital. The breach went undetected until those emails arrived. The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario investigated. The hospital then blocked AI scribe tools on-site and updated training and meeting-review policies.
What happened
What was done
No source states an action or fix.
Risks
Read from the sources; not yet reviewed by a person.
Controls
Not yet read for controls. Controls that mitigate the primary risk:
Harness ApplicationSensitive-data checks on outbound data · Output filtering and redaction · Human approval for high-impact actions · Data minimisation · Least-privilege access for the agent · Activity logs
Evidence
- Cause a human check that existed was skipped or failed
No source states: what went wrong, what it reached or did, how it was caught, when it was found, how many records were exposed, the direct loss, a count of the other parties affected, any court case, what set it off, what was done.
Show the full account: 5 items from the primary sources
What happened, in order
- 2023-06 Physician departed the hospital; the meeting organizer did not remove him from the meeting invite.
- 2024-09 Physician installed Otter.ai on a personal device; the tool could access the rounds meeting invite via his personal digital calendar.
- 2024-09-23 The AI tool automatically joined a virtual hepatology rounds meeting attended by hospital physicians.
Not dated in the sources:
- After the meeting, a meeting summary and access to the transcript were automatically emailed to participants; the breach was undetected until then.
- The hospital blocked AI scribe tools on-site via a firewall configuration.
Show every field, with its source and grade
The AI system
What happened
Impact
Notes on gaps
The 12 former employees were not counted as third parties. The IPC recommendation of a lobby is treated as evidence that this control was missing. Deepseek.com appears only in the hospital's blocking measure and is not treated as involved in the incident.
LR-2026-0338 · version 1 · published 2026-11-01 after automatic checks; not yet checked field by field by a person · JSON