Google's DeepMind has collaborated to London NHS hospital in using Google technology to treat patients effectively. The partnership is under a five-year contract that will allow Google to access patients' health records.
DeepMind is a British artificial intelligence company that was recently acquired by Google. DeepMind has been doing artificial intelligence research which aims "to solve complex problems without needing to be taught how." The AI research company has now been granted to access more than 1.6 million patient's information a year. The Google technology targets to free the medical staff from paper works and instead spend more time in the patient's care.
According to BBC, the five-year contract agreement is a partnership of Google DeepMind with Barnet, Chase Farm and Royal Free Hospitals. The agreement is to let medical staff use Google's technology with a mobile app called Streams.
The Google technology will scan patient's health records and medical histories to spot those who may be at risk of kidney disease, blood poisoning and organ failure. The Streams app will then alert doctors and clinic staff with patients who need medical attention. DeepMind is hopeful that this process will help boost survival since the medical staff will be allowed to act earlier and treat patients.
However, Google DeepMind's partnership with London NHS hospitals using Google technology is fired with privacy controversy. Phil Booth, Medconfidential spokesman pointed out "It's not about the one in six who will be helped by the app, but the five in six who don't have this condition but whose data gets copied anyway," The Sun reported.
Google DeepMind's co-founder Mustafa Suleyman said that the Google technology will only be used in health concerns. "Privacy and trust are paramount and we're holding ourselves to an unprecedented level of oversight," he added. DeepMind ensures the public that the agreement is transparent by appointing nine independent governors to oversee their work. Also, patients are allowed to opt-out to share their data by notifying their NHS Trust's data protection officer.
Meanwhile, DeepMind and London NHS hospitals partnership is a good step to use Google technology to speed up patient's treatment. The five-year deal claims that medics can spend an extra 500,000 hours per year with patients since medical staff will be free from their desk work.
