Google's DeepMind agrees new deal to share NHS patient data

Google's DeepMind has announced a five-year agreement with a UK National Health Service (NHS) trust that will give it access to patient data to develop and deploy its healthcare app, Streams. The new partnership follows an earlier agreement, the details of which New Scientist first revealed in April, which generated concerns over the amount and nature of data made available to DeepMind. The Streams app is designed to deliver an alert about a patient's condition to a doctor's or nurse's cellphone in a similar way to getting a news notification. It will initially be used from 2017 to spot people at risk of kidney problems, but is due to be expanded over the five years to include other functions such as detecting blood poisoning and coordinating patient treatment. DeepMind is working on the project with the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, which oversees Barnet, Chase Farm and Royal Free hospitals.