DeepMind's first deal with the NHS has been torn apart in a new academic study

A data-sharing deal between Google DeepMind and the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust was riddled with "inexcusable" mistakes, according to an academic paper published on Thursday. The "Google DeepMind and healthcare in an age of algorithms" paper -- coauthored by Cambridge University's Julia Powles and The Economist's Hal Hodson -- questions why DeepMind was given permission to process millions of NHS patient records so easily and without patient approval. "There remain many ongoing issues and it was important to document how the deal was set up, how it played out in public, and to try to caution against another deal from happening in this way in the future," Powles told Business Insider in Berlin the day before the paper was published. DeepMind and Royal Free say that the study "completely misrepresents the reality of how the NHS uses technology to process data" and that it contains "significant mistakes." Powles and Hodson said the accusations of misrepresentation and factual inaccuracy were unsubstantiated, and invited the parties to respond on the record in an open forum.