Peter Fleischer, the search engine provider's global privacy counsel, made the comment as part of a response to former shadow home secretary David Davis, who wrote in The Times that he would not trust Google to hold his personal data.
"Health information has to be secure, and should not be available to be used for commercial purposes," wrote Davis. "That means it should not be sold on, it should not be data mined for commercial insights, and it should not be used for targeted advertising."
In a speech given in April, party leader David Cameron mentioned Google and Microsoft services in the US as examples of how health records could be managed for free, compared with cost of the UK's National Programme for IT. Earlier this month, The Times claimed that the opposition has considered using the companies to hold NHS records.
Fleischer also responded to Davis' wider comments about Google and some of its services, describing his Times article as "vitriolic" and "riddled with misleading statements". "For a company that supposedly ignores European laws, we did not launch Google Street View in the UK until we had the green light from the Information Commissioner!" he commented.
More generally, in reply to Davis saying that Google makes money our of exploiting customers' private data, Fleischer said serving targeted adverts does not require personal data to be sold on or exposed in any way. On health, he said that a Flu Trends tool is acting an early warning system for outbreaks based on where users are searching for information on symptoms.
