NHS memo details Google/DeepMind's five year plan to bring AI to healthcare

More details have emerged about the sweeping scope of Google/DeepMind's ambitions for pushing its algorithmic fingers deep into the healthcare sector -- including wanting to apply machine learning processing to UK NHS data within five years. New Scientist has obtained a Memorandum of Understanding between DeepMind and the Royal Free NHS Trust in London, which describes what the pair envisage as a "broad ranging, mutually beneficial partnership, engaging in high levels of collaborative activity and maximizing the potential to work on genuinely innovative and transformational projects". Envisaged benefits of the collaboration include improvements in clinical outcomes, patient safety and cost reductions -- the latter being a huge ongoing pressure-point for the free-at-the-point-of-use NHS as demand for its services continues to rise yet government austerity cuts bite into public sector budgets. The MoU sets out a long list of "areas of mutual interest" where the pair see what they dub as "future potential" to work together over the five-year period of collaboration envisaged in the memorandum. The document, only parts of which are legally binding, was signed on January 28 this year.