We are very excited to announce the launch of DeepMind Health
We founded DeepMind to solve intelligence and use it to make the world a better place by developing technologies that help address some of society's toughest challenges. It was clear to us that we should focus on healthcare because it’s an area where we believe we can make a real difference to people’s lives across the world.
We're starting in the UK, where the National Health Service is hugely important to our team. The NHS helped bring many of us into the world, and has looked after our loved ones when they've most needed help. We want to see the NHS thrive, and to ensure that its talented clinicians get the tools and support they need to continue providing world-class care.
Frontline nurses, doctors and other healthcare professionals who spend their days treating patients know better than anyone what's needed to provide outstanding care. We at DeepMind Health aim to support clinicians by providing the technical expertise needed to build and scale technologies that help them provide the best possible care to their patients.
To get in touch, please contact us at sayhi@deepmindhealth.com.
We have been collaborating with some of the UK’s leading kidney experts at the Royal Free Hospital London, and product designers and engineers at digital product studio ustwo, to co-design and pilot a mobile app, called Streams, which presents timely information that helps nurses and doctors detect cases of acute kidney injury. AKI is a contributing factor in up to 20% of emergency hospital admissions as well as 40,000 deaths in the UK every year. Yet NHS England estimate that around 25% of cases are preventable.
Consultant Nephrologist and Associate Medical Director for patient safety at the Royal Free Hospital London, Dr Chris Laing, who helped design the app and oversaw two initial pilots at the Royal Free, said:
“Using Streams meant I was able to review blood tests for patients at risk of AKI within seconds of them becoming available. I intervened earlier and was able to improve the care of over half the patients Streams identified in our pilot studies.”
Chris, Sarah and Mary, from the Royal Free Hospital, helped us design and test Streams. Here’s what they had to say about it:
Doing a better job of identifying patients at risk is just the first step. When nurses and doctors are planning and taking action, we also need to help them move beyond the pain of organising everything they do with pagers, hand-written notes and fax machines. Frontline clinicians have long been demanding better tools and see their smartphones as the best solution.
Hark is an early stage clinical task management app created by Professor Ara Darzi and Dr Dominic King from Imperial College London. With support from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), they’ve spent the last five years rigorously researching the definition, prioritisation and allocation of core hospital tasks using digital platforms.
In successful early pilots at St Mary’s Hospital in London, they found that clinicians responded 37% faster with Hark than with pagers. Research published by the Imperial team in the journal Surgery found that effective care is delayed in up to 50% of patients at risk of significant deterioration, primarily because of poor communication.
We are delighted to announce that the Hark team is planning to join forces with DeepMind Health so we can accelerate and scale their efforts to revolutionise task management in hospitals. We plan to integrate their work into Streams over the coming months.
“This has the potential to transform healthcare delivery, but as clinicians and researchers we can only take digital solutions like this so far. To build and scale these tools across the NHS we need to work with the world’s leading technologists who share our commitment to safe and high quality care for all.”- Professor Ara Darzi
While projects like Hark and AKI detection are in their early stages, the problems they solve are fundamental to the NHS. The hope is that these tools can help shift more resources away from reaction and towards better prevention. Ultimately the aim is to give nurses and doctors more time to focus on what’s most important.
These past few months have given us a glimpse of what’s possible. As we continue to explore what nurses and doctors need, and work with them to design and scale new and better tools, we will remain guided by the following principles:
Nurses and doctors know best
Nurses and doctors are the experts; we can help by building tools to support them. Everything we do will be driven by the needs and insights of those involved in frontline care. From identifying challenges, to co-designing solutions, to oversight and governance, nurses and doctors will lead us every step of the way.
Stand behind the National Health Service
We are proud supporters of the NHS and believe in the core principle that healthcare should be universally available and free at the point of use. DeepMind Health’s work will support and strengthen the delivery of exemplary care in the NHS.
Build technologies that work together
Effective healthcare technologies must work well with existing systems while supporting further innovation by clinicians and technologists. We will develop open and interoperable technology while absolutely protecting the confidentiality of patient data. This ensures that the benefits of innovation are widely shared.
The world’s toughest problems become more tractable when diverse teams of leading practitioners work together in partnership. Building world-class technologies that support clinicians is one of the most important things we can do, and DeepMind Health is our promise to do just that.
Patients need to be certain that all their health data is handled with the utmost care and respect, and that their privacy and security are protected at all times. We have, and will always, hold ourselves to the highest possible standards of patient data protection and we’re clear about what this looks like:
We recognise that words alone are not enough: working in healthcare requires regular and independent oversight. We have asked a number of respected public figures to act in the public interest as unpaid Independent Reviewers of DeepMind Health.
They’ll meet four times a year to scrutinise our work with the NHS, and will publicly issue an annual report outlining their findings after reviewing our data sharing agreements, our privacy and security measures, and our product roadmaps. The Independent Reviewers will be:
We want to see the NHS thrive and we believe that by listening to and being led by clinicians themselves, we can deliver groundbreaking technology. Our hope is that through a focus on patient outcomes, effective oversight, and the highest ethical principles, we can achieve great results for the NHS and everyone who depends on it.
What is DeepMind Health?
DeepMind Health is a division within DeepMind that collaborates directly with frontline clinicians to develop technology that helps improve patient care.
Why is DeepMind working with the NHS?
To demonstrate that clinician-led, privacy-conscious innovation in healthcare technology can help nurses and doctors focus on providing the best possible care. We deeply believe in these partnerships and want to prove that this model improves patients’ lives and clinicians’ working environments, while also meeting the highest privacy and ethical standards.
What do you mean by clinician-led technology development?
Past technology implementations in healthcare have typically been top-down NHS-wide deployments, which aren’t always aligned with frontline clinical needs. Doctors and nurses are the real experts at identifying challenges in patient care, and how these obstacles could be overcome with new technology. If we can work directly with these clinicians to co-develop technology and help it scale, we think we can have a huge impact.
When will Streams be made available?
Streams is still very early in its development, and so far we have only run two small-scale pilots. We’ll continue to work on Streams and we’re aiming to do some peer-reviewed research later in the year.
Does Streams use AI?
No, artificial intelligence is not part of the early-stage pilots we’re announcing today. It’s too early to determine where AI could be applied here, but it’s certainly something we are excited about for the future.
