Google Merges DeepMind Health App With Other AI Efforts

Alphabet is merging part of its London-based artificial intelligence company DeepMind into sister company Google, according to Bloomberg.

DeepMind said the team that created a mobile app to alert health-care providers to hospital patients at risk of deteriorating will join a newly formed Google division, called Google Health. The unit is being headed by David Feinberg, the former chief executive officer of Geisinger Health Systems.

DeepMind Health’s first product, a mobile app called Streams that was originally designed to help doctors identify patients at risk of developing acute kidney injury, proved controversial. In July 2017, the U.K.’s data privacy watchdog said DeepMind’s partner in the project, London’s Royal Free Hospital, illegally gave DeepMind access to 1.6 million patient records. The Royal Free Hospital accepted the findings but said it needed to hand over the records so that DeepMind could test the app’s safety.

The Streams team and those employees working on clinical evaluations of algorithms will transfer to Google Health, according to a statement from DeepMind. Dominic King, a former NHS surgeon, who had been DeepMind Health’s clinical director, will lead the team in London and the DeepMind Health brand will cease to exist. Employees who were working on more fundamental and scientific research will remain at DeepMind, a company spokesperson said.