Google's DeepMind wants to bring AI learning to healthcare within 5 years

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Following an investigation that revealed DeepMind, Google's artificial intelligence arm, has access to the U.K.'s National Health Service's vast records of identifiable patient data, another interesting internal memo has shaken loose, reports New Scientist.

The partnership between DeepMind and NHS was initially announced in February, and has been followed by revelations that Google has access to data with identifiable patient information attached to it. This sparked a debate about the ethics of government-industry relations and where patient rights, consent and privacy fall therein.

A new memo obtained by New Scientist suggests that the NHS and DeepMind may have intentions to embark on projects in the near future that would apply machine learning to large stores of healthcare data. The goal of such an endeavor could be to deliver on the promise of producing actionable, meaningful insights about both patient-specific and population health patterns that otherwise wouldn't be visible.

The memorandum of understanding between NHS and Google states that, using the tech at its disposal, DeepMind hopes to get hold of  "data for machine learning research under appropriate regulatory and ethical approvals."

The partnership currently gives DeepMind access to 1.6 million records of patients treated by England, according to New Scientist.  

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