Google's DeepMind follows a mixed path to AI in medicine ZDNet

There are many headline studies about artificial intelligence making strides in medicine, but the reality can be somewhat more prosaic. What gets used in hospitals and clinicians' offices may be much simpler, and a lot less like AI than you would think. In the latest issue of Nature magazine, DeepMind researchers published the results of a deep learning project that can predict kidney failure of patients in the hospital up to 48 hours before the onset of symptoms, with far greater accuracy than existing computer programs for such predictive uses. Also this week, the DeepMind team published the results of a third-party survey of the use of a computer program called "Streams," which uses no artificial intelligence but which can be useful to physicians for things such as being alerted to warning signs about a patient. The first project, the deep learning one, has some ways to go to be put into practice, while the Streams software is already in use by doctors and hospital staff.