Google merges DeepMind health app with other AI efforts | Tech News

Google merges DeepMind health app with other AI efforts

DeepMind said the team that created a mobile app to alert health-care providers to hospital patients at risk of deteriorating will join a newly formed Google division, called Google Health

By: JEREMY KAHN
| Updated on: Aug 20 2022, 11:50 IST
Employees who were working on more fundamental and scientific research -- as opposed to building products from that research -- will remain at DeepMind
Employees who were working on more fundamental and scientific research -- as opposed to building products from that research -- will remain at DeepMind (AFP)

Alphabet Inc. is merging part of its London-based artificial intelligence company DeepMind into sister company Google.

DeepMind said Tuesday the team that created a mobile app to alert health-care providers to hospital patients at risk of deteriorating will join a newly formed Google division, called Google Health. The unit is being headed by David Feinberg, the former chief executive officer of Geisinger Health Systems.

You may be interested in

MobilesTablets Laptops
23% OFF
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra 5G
  • Green
  • 12 GB RAM
  • 256 GB Storage
24% OFF
Google Pixel 128GB
  • Black
  • 4 GB RAM
  • 128 GB Storage
36% OFF
Google Pixel 2 128GB
  • Kinda Blue
  • 4 GB RAM
  • 128 GB Storage
Samsung Galaxy S23 5G
  • Green
  • 8 GB RAM
  • 128 GB Storage

Google bought DeepMind, founded in 2012, for 400 million pounds in 2014. The next year, the company began working on health-care research, eventually creating an entire division dedicated to the area.

Also read
Looking for a smartphone? To check mobile finder click here.

DeepMind Health's first product, a mobile app called Streams that was originally designed to help doctors identify patients at risk of developing acute kidney injury, proved controversial. In July 2017, the U.K.'s data privacy watchdog said DeepMind's partner in the project, London's Royal Free Hospital, illegally gave DeepMind access to 1.6 million patient records.

The Royal Free Hospital accepted the findings but said it needed to hand over the records so that DeepMind could test the app's safety.

In addition to the Royal Free Hospital, DeepMind has agreements with three other U.K. National Health Service hospital trusts to deploy Streams. The company also has been working with NHS hospitals, researching algorithms that can diagnose eye diseases and spot head and neck cancers from medical imagery, and working with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs on an algorithm that can predict which patients are at risk of sudden deterioration from acute kidney injury and other conditions.

The Streams team and those employees working on clinical evaluations of algorithms will transfer to Google Health, according to a statement from DeepMind. Dominic King, a former NHS surgeon, who had been DeepMind Health's clinical director, will lead the team in London and the DeepMind Health brand will cease to exist.

Employees who were working on more fundamental and scientific research -- as opposed to building products from that research -- will remain at DeepMind, a company spokesperson said.

Demis Hassabis, DeepMind's co-founder and chief executive officer, portrayed the merger as a positive step. 'One of the reasons we joined forces with Google was to give us the platform to more rapidly bring our technologies to the wider world,' he said in a statement. 'The research team at DeepMind will continue to lead the way in applying AI to important fundamental research questions in science and medicine.'

Julia Powles, a research fellow at New York University's Information Law Institute who has criticised DeepMind's health-care work in the past, called the merger with Google "totally unacceptable" on Twitter. She said DeepMind had offered repeated assurances that no patient data from its work with NHS hospitals would ever be transferred to Google. "Now it has announced...exactly that," she tweeted. "This isn't transparency, it is trust demolition."

Catch all the Latest Tech News, Mobile News, Laptop News, Gaming news, Wearables News , How To News, also keep up with us on Whatsapp channel,Twitter, Facebook, Google News, and Instagram. For our latest videos, subscribe to our YouTube channel.

First Published Date: 14 Nov, 12:05 IST
Tags:
NEXT ARTICLE BEGINS