DeepMind, NHS use anonymized patient data in AI to avoid regulatory hurdles

Britain's National Health Service (NHS) announced in a recent press release that it will anonymize patients' personal health data before sharing it with Alphabet's DeepMind. The process could help the pair more effectively train machine learning-based healthcare tools without the risk of compliance issues. As noted by our sister site ZDNet, the two companies use the data to analyze blood results and detect risk of acute kidney injuries or other illnesses. Back in 2016, the NHS and Google's DeepMind received major flack for personal data being shared without explicit consent from patients, but the anonymization of the data could help alleviate these concerns. "The new de-identification process (known as De-ID) will protect patient privacy by de-identifying a person's records in a consistent way," said privacy engineering company Privitar in the release.