Deep Mind Health partnering with NHS for a mobile app that helps doctors and nurses detect cases of acute kidney injury

DeepMind, a London-based “neuroscience-inspired AI company” bought by Google in January 2014, has launched DeepMind Health.

Working with leading kidney experts at the Royal Free Hospital in London, DeepMind Health has produced a mobile phone app called “Streams.” It is designed to present “timely information that helps nurses and doctors detect cases of acute kidney injury” (AKI). DeepMind says that “AKI is a contributing factor in up to 20% of emergency hospital admissions as well as 40,000 deaths in the UK every year. Yet NHS England estimate that around 25% of cases are preventable.”

To bolster the capabilities of Streams, DeepMind Health has just acquired the company behind Hark, a clinical task management app. “We are delighted to announce that the Hark team is planning to join forces with DeepMind Health so we can accelerate and scale their efforts to revolutionize task management in hospitals,” said DeepMind. “We plan to integrate their work into Streams over the coming months.”

This suggests that Streams will become a general clinical data and task management app.

DeepMind Health says that its data-sharing agreements with the NHS hospitals “ensure that patients’ data will always be stored in the UK and won’t ever be linked or associated with Google accounts, products or services.” It also says “data will only ever be used for the purposes of improving healthcare,” but that would presumably include Google carrying out additional in-house analyses that might be relevant to that goal.

SOURCE – Ars Technica UK