DeepMind's new app will help alert UK doctors if a patient has a kidney injury

DeepMind, the AI firm owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, has announced a new five-year partnership with the UK’s Royal Free London NHS (National Health Service) Foundation Trust. Part of the agreement will include the launch of a smartphone app that’s designed to alert doctors if a patient has a kidney injury.

The app itself is called Streams, and has been in development for the past year. It uses data collected from the NHS. Using DeepMind’s AI system, the app will offer alerts to doctors if any test results show that a patient is at risk of developing acute kidney injury. The system will make its official debut in UK Royal Free hospitals in early 2017.

DeepMind believes that its AI system, combined with the Streams app, can be expanded in the future to offer alerts to doctors for other medical emergencies, such as if a patient is suffering from sepsis or other organ failure issues. DeepMind says it hopes it can cut the time to alert doctors to a patient’s needs from hours down to just a few seconds.

DeepMind adds that it is also making sure the medical data it collects and uses is secure. It states that all access is logged and is reviewed by both the Royal Free group as well as the company’s own independent reviewers. Both the DeepMind software and its data centers will be the subject of regular and deep technical audits as well.