Smart care: how Google DeepMind is working with NHS hospitals

Google DeepMind, the tech giant's London-based company most famous for its groundbreaking use of artificial intelligence, is developing a software in partnership with NHS hospitals to alert staff to patients at risk of deterioration and death through kidney failure. The technology, which is run through a smartphone app, has the support of Lord Darzi, the surgeon and former health minister in the Blair government who is director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London. "Innovation is the only solution we have for a sustainable NHS, both economically and in meeting the challenges and demands upon it," Darzi told the Guardian in a preview of the technology. Darzi has led a team working on a smartphone app called Hark for the last five years, which DeepMind has now acquired and will develop. Hark identifies the tasks that need to be performed to prevent a patient who has been admitted to hospital deteriorating, allocates them to the right staff, and tracks what has been done – or not done.