NHS hospital to treat patients with Google AI technology

The National Health Service has partnered with US tech giant Google to begin using artificial intelligence to treat patients at a hospital in London.

The five-year agreement between the Royal Free and Google's DeepMind operation will see over half a million hours a year of work being handed to the tech system, allowing doctors and nurses to concentrate more on treating patients.

More than 1.6m patients per year will have their details shared with a third party as a result of the agreement, and critics have expressed concern about a possible mishandling of data.

The technology will allow DeepMind to search the confidential information and send it to doctors almost immediately through a smartphone app.

Experts have said that thousands of lives could be saved as a result of utilising the system, which comes into place next year.

Currently staff at the Royal Free may spend hours wading through paper files and documents, and the hope from the NHS is that the workload associated with such exercises becomes drastically reduced.

"Doctors and nurses currently spend far too much time on paperwork, and we believe this technology could substantially reduce this burden, enabling doctors and nurses to spend more time on what they do best - treating patients," said Royal Free London chief executive David Sloman.

Co-founder of DeepMind Mustafa Suleyman said that Google had a unique responsibility to ensure that the data would be kept confidential at all times.

"Privacy and trust are paramount, and we're holding ourselves to an unprecedented level of oversight," he said.