DeepMind Strengthens NHS Ties With Imperial College Partnership

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust has partnered with Google-owned artificial intelligence (AI) company DeepMind to improve patient care through cutting edge digital technologies.

Over the next five years the two organisations will implement a range of clinical mobile apps, as well as an API to “manage the secure exchange of information” between the apps and the Trust’s current electronic patient record system.

The partnership also includes the deployment of Streams, DeepMind’s mobile app which alerts doctors when their patient’s condition worsens, enabling the appropriate care to be received from the right clinician when needed.

Digital healthcare

Dr Sanjay Gautama, chief clinical information officer for Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, said: “Apps have changed the way we live our lives, from banking to shopping, and they are clearly part of the future healthcare landscape. They bring immense opportunities for faster and more efficient care, by making access to vital information quicker and easier for clinicians. But for apps to be useful and safe they cannot operate in isolation – they need to be securely linked to the core electronic patient record system.

“By working with DeepMind we are embracing the opportunities that technology brings to improve patient care, using their expertise to help us deploy a system that allows us to maximise future innovations in mobile technology for healthcare for the benefit of our patients.”

The Trust has spent the last two years digitising its patent records, enabling critical information to be more readily available to doctors, and now sees apps as the next step in its digital transformation.

As well as Streams, the API will enable Imperial College Healthcare to deploy other healthcare apps to further improve patient safety and care – such as providing anywhere-access to diagnostic information – whilst also ensuring that confidential data is stored securely.

Mustafa Suleyman, Co-Founder of DeepMind, said the company was “really excited” to be partnering with the NHS Trust and will be implementing infrastructure to help it “work securely with a wide range of other apps, which we believe will make it far easier to bring the latest innovations to the clinical frontline.”

Imperial College Healthcare is the second NHS Trust to have partnered with DeepMind, after The Royal Free London Foundation announced a five-year deal with the Google subsidiary in November to develop a diagnostic tool, although it has faced some criticism over the access it will get to sensitive NHS data.

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