Google's AI will analyze case histories of millions of UK patients.

The National Health Service of the United Kingdom (NHS) has provided Google with access to confidential information - the case histories of a half million patients. At the disposal of the publication New Scientist was a document that describes in detail what information about patients falls into the hands of DeepMind - a division of Google, which is engaged in the development of artificial intelligence.

DeepMind gains access to patient information passing through three major hospitals in London served by the Royal Free NHS Trust - Barnet, Chase Farm and Royal Free. The agreement includes access to patient information obtained over the past five years. Naturally, it will be possible to find out about HIV-infected people, drug overdose cases, abortions, and other confidential things.

DeepMind mentioned in the February announcement that the company's cooperation with the NHS will involve the creation of a Streams product that will allow doctors to better monitor patients with kidney disease. But it becomes clear that cooperation goes much further. By the way, Google has long been interested in using AI for medical purposes .

According to the letter of the agreement, Google will not be able to use the data in its other projects, it will be stored on the server capacity of a third-party company, and DeepMind is obliged to remove its copies upon the expiration of the cooperation in 2017.
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Google explains that data is required by companies in the Streams project - but since the information about patients with kidney diseases is not stored separately in the hospital, they need full access to all the information of all patients.

The document also mentions that DeepMind is developing another system called Patient Rescue, designed to provide analytics for hospitals — for example, to conduct real-time data analysis to help doctors diagnose. At the same time, it is not planned to create a fully automatic system that diagnoses and prescribes treatment - only helping doctors to process large volumes of information.

“In the 21st century, medicine is becoming digital, which brings great benefits to patients,” says British Free Life Science Minister George Freeman. “But NHS patients should know that their data will remain safe and will not be sold or used in bad faith.” Therefore, we have introduced a number of stringent restrictions that will ensure patient confidentiality. ”