UK healthcare products regulator in talks with Google/DeepMind over its Streams app

An app being made by DeepMind, the Google-owned AI company, working in collaboration with the NHS Royal Free Trust in London and being used to help identify hospital patients who might be at risk of acute kidney disease (AKI) is not currently in use, TechCrunch has learned. The collaboration between the tech giant and a portion of the UK's publicly funded health service has drawn criticism for the breadth of patient data being used to power an app which targets a single medical condition. DeepMind and the Royal Free have also been criticized for not approaching the UK's medicines and healthcare devices regulator, the MHRA, prior to using the Streams app in hospitals. The MHRA is responsible for standards of safety, quality and efficacy for healthcare products, which can include software apps. It has emerged that DeepMind and the Royal Free Trust are now in discussions with the MHRA over whether the Streams app needs to be registered as a medical device.