Skip to main content
NOPE
Medium reported severity Regulatory Action

Ontario hospital reports that an Otter.ai bot joined physicians' rounds through a former doctor's invite, recorded them and emailed patient information

An Ontario hospital reported to the provincial privacy commissioner that on 23 September 2024 the Otter.ai transcription tool, installed on a personal device by a physician who had left the hospital in June 2023 and was still on the meeting invite, joined a virtual hepatology rounds meeting, recorded it without notice and then emailed a summary and transcript access to the invite list. The personal health information of seven patients, including diagnoses and treatment, was captured; 12 of the 65 recipients appeared to have left the hospital. The commissioner's letter of 27 October 2025 recommended that the hospital itself ask Otter.ai to delete the retained patient data.

AI system
Otter.ai (reported)
Otter.ai
Occurred
23 Sept 2024
Reported
19 November 2025
Event location
Canada
What the AI did
Received personal information about the person
Reported harm
Other Material Harm
Whose AI use
Someone else’s AI use
Setting
Privacy · Health · Work
Evidence
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account
6 claims: 1 documented, 5 reported. 4 open questions
People reported harmed
7 people

AI system as recorded: Otter.ai, an AI transcription tool that a former hospital physician installed on a personal device and that joined meetings from his calendar (per the hospital's report to the IPC)

What Happened

The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario released, without the hospital's name, its 27 October 2025 letter on Reported Breach HR24-00691. According to the hospital's report recorded in the letter, a former physician who left in June 2023 had used his personal email address in the meeting group and was never removed from the invite. In September 2024 he installed Otter.ai, an AI transcription tool not approved by the hospital, on his personal device. Through the link in his personal calendar the tool joined the 23 September 2024 virtual hepatology rounds meeting and recorded it without notice. Seven admitted patients were discussed; their names, sex, physician's name, diagnoses, medical notes and treatment information were captured in the transcript. The breach came to light when a summary and transcript access were automatically emailed to the 65 users on the recipient list. Fifty-three confirmed deletion or non-receipt; the other 12 appeared to have left the hospital. The physician confirmed removing hospital materials from his own devices but did not respond to the request to ask Otter.ai to delete the recording. The hospital notified five patients on 17 December 2024 (two had died), blocked AI scribe tools on site and revised its training and policies. The commissioner recommended that the hospital formally request deletion from Otter.ai, delete the email from departed staff accounts, audit offboarding and require meeting lobbies. The Globe and Mail reported that Otter.ai did not respond to its request for comment.

Reported harm

Seven patients' health information was recorded by an unapproved AI transcription bot, which then emailed a summary and transcript access to 65 people, 12 of whom appeared to have left the hospital, according to the hospital's report to Ontario's privacy commissioner.

Outcome

Resolved

The IPC closed the reported breach (HR24-00691) with recommendations in its letter of 27 October 2025, including a formal deletion request to Otter.ai, and asked for a status update by 27 January 2026; it may re-open the matter.

What remains unknown

  • Whether Otter.ai deleted the recording and transcript; the hospital had no confirmation when the letter was written.
  • Whether the 12 departed recipients deleted the email.
  • Whether the former physician knew the tool had joined the meeting.
  • What the hospital reported to the IPC by the 27 January 2026 update deadline.

What the evidence supports

AI involvement: supported. The hospital's report recorded in the regulator's letter says the Otter.ai tool itself joined the rounds meeting from a former physician's calendar, recorded it without notice, captured seven patients' health information in its transcript and automatically emailed a summary and transcript access to 65 recipients. That capture and distribution by the AI service is the privacy harm.

6 claims: 1 documented, 5 reported. What the statuses mean

Documented The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario wrote to the hospital on 27 October 2025 about a privacy breach the hospital had reported on 17 December 2024 under the Personal Health Information Protection Act (file HR24-00691).

Causal attribution. The letter itself establishes its date, file and the reported breach it addresses.

  • ipc.on.ca(opens in new tab) supports · English
    Letter: 'October 27, 2025'; 'Reported Breach HR24-00691'; 'On December 17, 2024, you reported a privacy breach under the Personal Health Information Protection Act'.
Reported According to the hospital's report as recorded by the IPC, on 23 September 2024 the Otter.ai AI transcription tool joined a virtual hepatology rounds meeting of hospital physicians through the meeting link in a former physician's personal calendar and recorded the meeting without notice; the physician had left the hospital in June 2023 and installed Otter.ai on his personal device in September 2024.

Causal attribution. The hospital's own breach report, relayed by the regulator; the Globe relays the same letter.

  • ipc.on.ca(opens in new tab) supports · English
    Letter: 'a virtual hepatology rounds meeting attended by hospital physicians was inadvertently recorded by an artificial intelligence-powered transcription tool'; 'The physician left his employment with the hospital in June 2023. He installed Otter.ai on his personal device in September 2024.'; 'the Tool was able to join the September 23, 2024 hepatology rounds meeting via accessing the link to it in the physician'; 'and record the meeting without' (page break) 'notice. This was discovered'.
  • theglobeandmail.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'an Otter.ai bot attended the meeting in his place'
Reported The personal health information of seven patients admitted to the hospital, including names, sex, diagnoses, medical notes and treatment information, was discussed in the meeting and captured in the transcript.

Causal attribution. Hospital's report as recorded by the IPC.

  • ipc.on.ca(opens in new tab) supports · English
    Letter: 'the personal health information of seven patients was discussed amongst the meeting participants and captured in the transcript'; 'diagnoses, medical notes, and treatment information'.
Reported The breach was discovered when the tool automatically emailed a meeting summary and access to the transcript to participants; 65 users were on the recipient list, 53 confirmed deleting the email or never receiving it, and the remaining 12 appeared to have left the hospital.

Causal attribution. Hospital's report as recorded by the IPC; the Globe relays the same figures.

  • ipc.on.ca(opens in new tab) supports · English
    Letter: 'This was discovered when a meeting summary and access to a transcript of the recording was automatically emailed to participants after the meeting'; 'of the 65 users on the recipient list, 53 responded confirming they either deleted the email or never received it'; 'the remaining 12 individuals appear to have departed from the hospital'.
  • theglobeandmail.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'sent a summary and a link to a transcript of the meeting to 65 people on the invite list, 12 of whom were no longer employed by the hospital'
Reported The hospital asked the former physician to have Otter.ai delete the recording, but he did not respond; the IPC recommended that the hospital itself formally ask Otter.ai to delete any patient information retained from the meeting.

Causal attribution. Mixed origin: the recommendation is the IPC's own and documented by the letter; the physician's non-response is the hospital's report recorded in the letter, so the whole claim is reported.

  • ipc.on.ca(opens in new tab) supports · English
    Letter: 'the physician did not respond to this request'; 'Submit a formal request to Otter.ai to delete any personal health information'.
Reported Five of the seven patients were notified by letter on 17 December 2024; the other two had died, and the hospital sent a notice to one estate trustee and placed a copy in the other patient's health record.

Causal attribution. Hospital's report as recorded by the IPC; the deaths are not connected to the breach in any source.

  • ipc.on.ca(opens in new tab) supports · English
    Letter: 'five of seven affected individuals were notified of the breach by letter on December 17, 2024'; 'the other two affected individuals are deceased'; 'For one of these individuals, the hospital provided a copy of the notice letter to their estate trustee'; 'uploaded a copy of the notice letter to the patient’s electronic health record'.

Sources

3 sources inspected, from 1 underlying account. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other.

How the sources were read, and where the events happened

Letter of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario to the hospital, Reported Breach HR24-00691, dated 27 October 2025, released without the hospital's name; the ipc.on.ca download returned HTTP 403 to this fetcher and the full letter was read from an Internet Archive capture on 2026-10-21. Applies to s1.

The Globe and Mail, 19 November 2025; read in full on 2026-10-21. Its account of the breach comes from the IPC letter, so it shares that letter's group. Applies to s2.

Canadian HR Reporter, 21 November 2025; read in full on 2026-10-21. Its account comes from the IPC letter; its headline says information went to patients, which its own text and the letter do not support. Applies to s3.

Event countries: Canada. Affected-person countries: Canada. Court countries: Unknown.

The letter is from Ontario's privacy commissioner to a hospital custodian under Ontario's health privacy law, and the patients had been admitted to that hospital; the Globe describes it as an Ontario hospital. No court is involved.

Reviewed for publication 2026-10-21: Published under the 2026-10-06 privacy clarification: a regulator's letter records the hospital's report that an AI transcription tool joined a clinical meeting without notice, captured seven patients' health information and emailed it to a list including former staff. The relation is received_personal_information.

People described

Seven patients admitted to an Ontario hospital whose health information was discussed in the recorded meeting (hospital and patients not named)

People reported harmed in this case

7 people

0 AI participants · 7 other people harmed

The IPC letter records that the personal health information of seven patients was discussed in the meeting and captured in the transcript. Meeting participants and email recipients are not counted as harmed.

Counted once within this case. The same person may appear in other cases. This count does not establish AI causation.

Tags

#otter-ai#ai-notetaker#meeting-transcription#health-information#privacy-breach#regulator#ontario

Cite this case

Compiled per our published methodology: verification statuses, sourcing standards, and corrections process.

APA

NOPE. (2026). Ontario hospital reports that an Otter.ai bot joined physicians' rounds through a former doctor's invite, recorded them and emailed patient information. AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2024-ontario-hospital-otter-ai-bot-recorded-physicians-rounds-meeting-and-emailed-patient-health-information

BibTeX

@misc{2024_ontario_hospital_otter_ai_bot_recorded_physicians_rounds_meeting_and_emailed_patient_health_information,
  title = {Ontario hospital reports that an Otter.ai bot joined physicians' rounds through a former doctor's invite, recorded them and emailed patient information},
  author = {NOPE},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {AI incidents},
  url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2024-ontario-hospital-otter-ai-bot-recorded-physicians-rounds-meeting-and-emailed-patient-health-information}
}

Related cases

Medium Unidentified OpenAI generative AI service (reported)

An insurer says a health-guidance contractor's employee entered data on 19,996 people, including disease information, into an unauthorised generative AI service

Notices from RIZAP's client insurers say that on 20 August 2026 it emerged that a staff member of RIZAP, the company they contract for specific health guidance, had entered data containing members' personal information into an external generative AI service that RIZAP had not permitted for work. The National Civil Engineering and Construction National Health Insurance Association (Doken Kokuho) puts the whole data set at 19,996 people, 1,167 of them its own members, and says the service was not under a corporate contract and that the matter was found when the employee noticed the transmission and reported it. A local-government employees' mutual aid association counts 726 of its members across 14 branches, and the IHI group health insurance society 210, according to a security news site that reads these as subsets of the 19,996. The data included membership numbers, email addresses, names, dates of birth, sex, some addresses and phone numbers, the type of health guidance and, for members with them, high blood pressure, diabetes or dyslipidaemia. The IHI society's notice, as relayed, names OpenAI as the provider and says OpenAI answered on 1 September that the data had not been used for model training. RIZAP's release, as described in an ITmedia column, says no third party other than the service operator could have viewed the data. Doken Kokuho says RIZAP confirmed to it that no third party viewed or used the information through the service; whether the provider's staff could view it was still being checked when the mutual aid association and the IHI society published.

Medium ChatGPT

Texas health plan says an employee uploaded a file of members' personal and prescription data to ChatGPT from a home network, against its policy

Community First Health Plans, a nonprofit health plan in San Antonio, Texas, said in a 29 June 2026 release that on the evening of 29 April 2026 one of its employees uploaded a file containing personal information of some members to ChatGPT from a home computer network, circumventing the plan's firewall safeguards and violating its policy. The plan says it does not use ChatGPT and that its systems detected the violation and alerted its IT department. According to the release, the file may have included members' names, addresses, dates of birth, member identification numbers and prescription drug information. The next morning the plan revoked the employee's access, directed and verified deletion of the data from the employee's ChatGPT account, asked OpenAI to delete any related data, and ended its relationship with the employee. It notified affected members and federal and state agencies, offered 12 months of identity monitoring and says it is not aware of any misuse. The release gives no number of affected members.

High ChatGPT (reported)

Eindhoven municipality says staff uploaded files with residents' youth-care and social-support data and applicants' CVs to public AI websites such as ChatGPT

The municipality of Eindhoven in the Netherlands told its council in an information letter shared on Thursday 18 December 2025 that a sample of staff data traffic from 23 September to 23 October 2025 showed files containing personal data of residents and employees had been sent to public AI websites such as ChatGPT, according to Omroep Brabant and Binnenlands Bestuur. The files included youth-care (Jeugdwet) documents, internal reports and CVs, mostly from departments that provide care and support to residents. According to Omroep Brabant's account of findings by the advisory firm Hooghiemstra & Partners, the youth-care documents held information about the mental and physical health of minor children, and social-support (WMO) documents and applicants' CVs were also entered. The municipality reported the breach to the Dutch Data Protection Authority on 23 October, blocked public AI websites and asked OpenAI to delete the files. The council says the scale cannot be determined because the data was kept for only 30 days, so it cannot inform those affected, and that the risk of misuse is limited but cannot be ruled out. A spokesperson said OpenAI had not yet replied.

Low Otter Notetaker

United States: seven people who say they had no Otter account allege its AI Notetaker recorded calls without consent; a judge let core privacy claims proceed

Seven people in California, Illinois and Washington state are suing Otter.ai in a consolidated class action in the Northern District of California. Each says another meeting participant used Otter's AI Notetaker on a Zoom or Microsoft Teams call they joined, and that Otter recorded, transcribed and stored their conversation without their consent; six of them date their calls between March 2024 and May 2025. They say they were not Otter account holders. The calls they describe include a medical consultation, meetings with a financial professional and work discussions. They allege that Otter keeps the recordings and uses them to train its speech-recognition models, that it captured voiceprints of the Illinois plaintiffs, and one of them says learning of the recording left him frustrated, embarrassed and stressed. On 13 August 2026 the court found that the alleged interception of private conversations was a concrete injury and let the federal wiretap, California eavesdropping and Illinois biometric claims proceed, while dismissing some claims. Otter's answer to the consolidated complaint, filed on 17 September 2026, says it lacks knowledge of the plaintiffs' experiences and denies the allegations.

If you or someone you know is struggling, free and confidential support is available. Find a helpline near you at Signpost.

Back to all incidents