Google's DeepMind signs deal with Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust

Five-year deal for DeepMind's Streams app follows controversy about transfer of sensitive patient data

Google's London-based artificial intelligence company DeepMind, has signed a five-year deal with Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust for the use of its Streams clinical app, which both parties claim will improve patient safety.

DeepMind has been under scrutiny about its first NHS data-sharing agreement, in which the Royal Free NHS Trust shared 1.6 million patient medical records with the AI company during the development of Streams. It is still under investigation by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) about the transfer of sensitive patient data.

The company, which was bought by Google for £400m in January 2014, also has an agreement with Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, and University College London Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

In a blog post, DeepMind claimed that nurses using Streams at the Royal Free claim that the app is "saving them up to two hours a day". It said that while other systems can take hours, Streams uses a ‘breaking news' style alert to notify clinicians within seconds when a test result indicates that one of their patients has displayed indications of becoming ill.

Musgrove Park Hospital, a part of Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, will work with DeepMind to implement and develop the Streams app.

The Hospital said that the app would be available at the bedside to alert doctors and nurses to any patients that need immediate assessment, and to help them rapidly determine whether the patient has other serious conditions, such as acute kidney injury.

It added that it would also enable clinical staff we see all relevant information, such as results of x-rays, scans or blood tests in one place.

The Hospital said that the app uses "tried and tested NHS guidance (algorithms) to process patient information in order to raise safety alerts". It said that the app would not use any information that is not already available to hospital staff, and that patient data would remain at all times under the control of Musgrove Park Hospital.

Dr Luke Gompels, consultant in medicine at Musgrove Park Hospital, said: "This is all about early detection of seriously unwell patients so that we can immediately escalate care, ensure a very rapid response, and make sure they are treated quickly by the right specialist doctor. In this way we can make more of a difference, more quickly."

The Hospital will be holding workshops, displays and open day events with its staff and the public to see how the app works, what it will mean for patients and how it might be developed in the future.

Privacy campaigners, though, will be keeping a close eye on all of DeepMind's contracts with the NHS.

Last month, a leaked letter from the National Data Guardian of the Department of Health, Dame Fiona Caldicott to the Royal Free's medical director Professor Stephen Powis, suggested that the transfer of records to Google in September 2015 was legally flawed.