Google last week announced that it is absorbing DeepMind Health, a part of its London-based AI lab DeepMind, as part of ongoing reorganization of its health care efforts.

In a blog post, the company said it was a “major milestone” and that it would help turn its Streams app, which is being tested in the UK as a way to help health care practitioners better manage patients. The Stream app, which Google developed to help the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) would be turned into “an AI-powered assistant for nurses and doctors” that combines “the best algorithms with intuitive design,” the company said in its blog post.

DeepMind said its Streams team is committed to carrying out ongoing work with the NHS, including a number of ambitious research projects, such as using AI to spot eye disease in routine scans.

The news is potentially controversial given the upset in the UK caused by one of DeepMind’s early deals with the NHS. The country’s data watchdogs ruled in 2017 that a partnership DeepMind struck with the NHS was illegal, as individuals had not been properly informed about how their medical data would be used.

Another consistent worry for privacy advocates in the UK has been the prospect of Google getting its hands on this sort of information. It is not clear what the absorption of the Streams team into Google means in that context.

The ongoing reorganization at DeepMind clearly signals Google’s ambitions in health care and its desire to get the most of its acquisition of the London AI lab. There have reportedly been long-standing tensions between DeepMind and Google, with the latter wanting to commercialize the former’s work. Compared to Google, DeepMind has positioned itself as a cerebral home for long-sighted research, attracting some of the world’s best AI talent in the process.

DeepMind Health is reported to have produced several works with immediate and practical applications than other divisions in Google and this has probably attracted the attention of high-ups in Google. The restructuring is expected to see Google’s diverse health related efforts being consolidated.


Read Today's News TODAY... on our Telegram Channel click here to join and receive all the latest updates t.me/thetimeskuwait