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Google: Trust us with NHS AI

The cofounder of Google's artificial intelligence company DeepMind has responded to widespread concerns that the biz is being granted access to more than a million people's private healthcare records in the UK.

Mustafa Suleyman reckons his company is highly qualified to look after the information given Google's long history of protecting personal information. "As Googlers, we have the very best privacy and secure infrastructure for managing the most sensitive data in the world," he said. "That's something we’re able to draw upon as we’re such a core part of Google."

While data security was one issue in question following the news that Google was receiving full patient data in a trial over developing an app for kidney conditions, the bigger concerns stemmed from the fact that the internet giant was being given the data at all, and that patients were not being informed about it, nor given an easy way to opt-out of their highly personal information being shared with one of the world's largest for-profit organizations.

Suleyman stressed that the contract signed between DeepMind and the Royal Free NHS Trust prevented the data from being shared with other parts of Google and that it is required to delete its copy of the database when the agreement ends. He did not say what would happen to the extremely valuable intelligence built up through analysis of that data, however. ®

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