DeepMind, artificial intelligence and the future of the NHS
Health experts believe artificial intelligence could be the answer to our overwhelmed healthcare system. It isn't the stuff of science fiction. It's already here. David Aaronovitch meets the brains behind the technology
Mustafa Suleyman, 35, co-founder of DeepMind, whose Streams app is being tested at the Royal Free Hospital, LondonTom Jackson
The Times, September 14 2019, 12:01am
One morning a few weeks ago Stephen Foot, a warehouseman from Enfield, woke up in a London hospital to discover the unlikely harbinger of a coming medical revolution. This Ghost of Healthcare to Come took the form of a nephrologist at the end of his bed. "That was the last thing I was expecting," he tells me. "Somebody from the renal department to come and say, 'Oh, by the way, there's something going on that has sparked an alert on your kidney.'"
Foot had entered hospital because of his foot. He had stepped out of the bathroom at home and trodden on something. "It was a trinket off a keyring which had a glass bottle of fairy dust in it. But because I've got bad…