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Google Is Absorbing DeepMind's Health Care Unit To Create An 'AI Assistant For Nurses and Doctors'

Posted by BeauHD on from the shaping-up-fast dept.

Google has announced that it's absorbing DeepMind Health, a part of its London-based AI lab DeepMind. "In a blog post, DeepMind's founders said it was a 'major milestone' for the company that would help turn its Streams app -- which it developed to help the UK's National Health Service (NHS) -- into 'an AI-powered assistant for nurses and doctors' that combines 'the best algorithms with intuitive design,'" reports The Verge. "Currently, the Streams app is being piloted in the UK as a way to help health care practitioners manage patients." From the report: DeepMind says its Streams team will remain in London and that it's committed to carrying out ongoing work with the NHS. These include a number of ambitious research projects, such as using AI to spot eye disease in routine scans. The news is potentially controversial given the upset in the UK caused by one of DeepMind's early deals with the NHS. The country's data watchdogs ruled in 2017 that a partnership DeepMind struck with the NHS was illegal, as individuals hadn't been properly informed about how their medical data would be used.

Another consistent worry for privacy advocates in the UK has been the prospect of Google getting its hands on this sort of information. It's not clear what the absorption of the Streams team into Google means in that context, but we've reached out to DeepMind for clarification. According to a report from CNBC, the independent review board DeepMind set up to oversee its health work will likely be shut down as a result of the move. More broadly speaking, the news clearly signals Google's ambitions in health care and its desire to get the most of its acquisition of the London AI lab. There have reportedly been long-standing tensions between DeepMind and Google, with the latter wanting to commercialize the former's work. Compared to Google, DeepMind has positioned itself as a cerebral home for long-sighted research, attracting some of the world's best AI talent in the process.

27 comments

  1. So what do you think? by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

    In three or four years are we going to see an announcement that all the “Alphabet” companies are being brought under the Google umbrella, and going forward Alphabet will be known as Google?

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:So what do you think? by rtb61 · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I think we are going to see a class action law suit for invasion of privacy and the legal requirement to keep medical records private. Those perverted freak cunts at Google wanting to invade you privacy, during the fucking diagnosis. Oh your name is not on the record but the IP address of the device as, as is you fucking location in the fucking doctors office.

      Shit governments doing nothing about Alphabets mass sick invasions of privacy going unquestioned because they are selling the data to government to control you. Who did you vote for, well no job for you and any applications to government for anything delayed and delayed and delayed.

      The sick fucks at Alphabet have no limit to their pathetic perverted prying into everyone's lives, the sicko control freaks, with delusions of controlling you or destroying you as the mood strikes. Hardly surprising those anal retentive fucks are also molesters at the work place, goes with the psyche profile, a pack of sick cunts.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    2. Re:So what do you think? by Spamalope · · Score: 1

      As a condition of care you sign a form authorizing sharing of data with 'certain partners' to facilitate care, or you get no treatment. See? It's voluntary now. If you're in the UK or Canada, then it's single payer and the state decided for you. We know you have a herniated disk in your back, so pick up that can - hahahahah!

      Here in the US, workers comp is similar. You have no choice, and they sell your data for a nickle. Now I'm getting calls 5-10 times a week from medical device scammers who have been sold my medical history. If I'm on facebook, the adds are about my medical condition. But everyone claims they never sold the data, it was someone else and you can't prove anything hah hah hah. Right.

    3. Re:So what do you think? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's pretty much a given at some point. What I'm really looking forward to is when Amazon, Google and Facebook realize they could be more profitable if they teamed up than they are working around each other and just merge their asses into one big data-siphoning machine. Our government won't stop it. Hell, they'll most likely just sign the country over to them and we can start living our lives "For the Corporation, By the Corporation, Of the Corporation."

    4. Re:So what do you think? by KingMotley · · Score: 1

      Unless your significant other is a doctor, your fucking location shouldn't be in the doctors office.

  2. Fire Sale On Good Intentions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is the reason you cannot trust good companies or at least no more then you should trust a bad one. At some point, everyone falls and when they do the crows feast!

    1. Re:Fire Sale On Good Intentions by phantomfive · · Score: 2

      I don't get the logic that says, 'building a robot that folds clothes is hard. Why don't we build one that helps doctors because that's easier??"

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:Fire Sale On Good Intentions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because it is easier in some respects. Clothes folding requires an intuitive understand of how to interact with deformable physical objects. I.E. lots and lots of real world experience that can only be gained over thousands of hours on real robots with advanced reinforcement learning techniques.

      On the other hand building image classifiers based on mountains of actual scans can be (relatively speaking) trivial.

    3. Re:Fire Sale On Good Intentions by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      I don't know folding clothes is necessarily harder, but it is much more expensive, simply because of all the extra mechanical parts. And the work output of a clothes folding machine is much less valuable than the output of an expert system that looks at medical scans.

    4. Re:Fire Sale On Good Intentions by mikael · · Score: 1

      There is the Da Vinci robotic surgery system:
      https://www.davincisurgery.com...

      That's almost getting close to the Waldos by the story "Waldo" by Robert A. Heinlein
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      Building a clothes folding robot requires identification of the object to be folded, it's orientation, identification of any existing creases (office suit trousers), identification of wrinkles that have to be removed, reorientation to remove wrinkles, then the correct way of folding for every type of clothing (trousers, jerseys, t-shirts, shirts, dresses, skirts), identification of materials that can't be folded or can be folded.

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
    5. Re:Fire Sale On Good Intentions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't get the logic that says, 'building a robot that folds clothes is hard. Why don't we build one that helps doctors because that's easier??"

      Folding clothes is hard because it requires understanding of a 3D environment and delicate movement. These don't seem difficult to us, because any competent human over 5 can do them unconsciously. But implementing them in AI turns out to be very hard.

      Some medical tasks are simply data in, data out and pattern matching, for example making diagnoses based on scan results. This is exactly the kind of thing that the kind of AI algorithms we have now are good at.

      AI willl not be better than humans at some tasks we find simple for a long time, maybe never. But it already is better at us at some tasks. GPs shouldn't be afraid of automation, radiographers should.

    6. Re:Fire Sale On Good Intentions by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      Because any field where a large part of the training is rote memorization is ripe for AI assistants which can thrash through vast amounts of sensor and scan data to support human professionals in making inferences.

  3. Dr. Kellogg knowledge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So the system can recommend enemas to everyone.

    1. Re: Dr. Kellogg knowledge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pelvic massages that are fisting.
      Electric baths that are basically hands free orgasms.

      And Matthew Broderick or something

  4. OK Google ... by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 1

    ... tell me where in this brain to cut next.

  5. What's expensive and what isn't. by XXongo · · Score: 1
    Designing a robot to fold clothes isn't impossible, but nobody would pay $200,000 for a robot that folds clothes to replace a worker making $7.25 an hour.

    Hospitals would easily pay $200,000 for a robot that does some of the work of a $1,000,000/year physician, if it allows that doctor to see 10% more patients

  6. That makes warm and fuzzy by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 1

    If this assistant is anything like the Google Assistant, expect frustration and cockups galore.

  7. Google culture of acquiescence by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    900 lbs gorilla in the room is GOOG here and itâ(TM)s culture is one of machine over man!

    Human beings are disposable, throw them under a bus; severance pay them out but get the account, data and eyeballs to make more eyeballs.

    Do No Evil has been lost to progress at the expense of humans in favor of the machine. Thatâ(TM)s the Google way

  8. Re:ZIP a lying CHIMP got his ass kicked allover by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bring it you stupid bastard who's parents sold their house to them so that you didn't have to live out on the streets when your mom went back to Poland to live out her retirement without having to care for he mentally disabled son.

  9. Jot that down for me, RONI. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    +100 Internets to the first person who gets this reference.