Who Knows That You're Healthy? - Google!
Just imagine you went to your Doctor, and say you had a sore foot, and a pop-up for joint ailment cream appeared on your mobile device? We are now getting to the point where this may be possible, and where there are many key questions that need to be answered. The increased usage of data analytics, information sharing and the Cloud will provide integrated health and social care services, and where the citizen is at the centre, but there are many barriers to cross, especially in how the data will be used, and the rights that individuals have over their health and social care records.
So remember "Deep Thought" who discovered that the answer to life, the universe and everything was "42", well now we have Google Deep Mind.
Google knows best?
As if we didn't know it, Google is the one that knows you best. They know every little feeling that you have, and where you've been. Now Google will know a whole lot more about you with a data-sharing agreement on Google DeepMind's collaboration with the NHS. Google has tried in the past to get into health care, but their Google Health was mired with a lack of adoption and concerns about data privacy, but now they are back. Only Microsoft, with Microsoft HealthVault, have kept the momentum in the area. Sitekit, for example, have built a child's health record around it, and where personal health records can be stored on cloud-based systems:
The five-year agreement is between DeepMind - Google's artificial intelligence company - and the Royal Free NHS Trust, and covers access to health care data related to 1.6 million patients. The hospitals involved are Barnet, Chase Farm and the Royal Free. Included in this will be access to highly sensitive information such as information related to HIV, drug overdoses and abortions.
One of the first apps to be built is Streams, which monitors patients with kidney disease, but the scope of apps are likely to expand on the basis of the collaboration. As with many databases in the NHS on patient records the data is often aggregated together for each patient, thus there is no separate data for kidney conditions, but DeepMind requires access to the full health care record. Google also have plans for a tool called Patient Rescue which will feed information to NHS hospital trusts.
Strong governance
A previous barrier has been that health care data is not allowed to be stored outside the UK, but DeepMind says that they will only use UK storage and that the data will be deleted after September 2017. They have also stated that there will be strict governance rules on the access to data, and that it will only be used for clinical usage. This would mean that Google would not be able to cross-correlate health data with the data it normally captures on individuals and thus
This would mean that Google would not be able to cross-correlate health data with the data it normally captures on individuals and thus customise advertising for them. While gathering the data, Google will also log normal activity within the hospital, such as the location and status of patients, and share test results on them, and for critical care and A&E data. With the analytics, Deep Mind aims to also predict the early signs of illness, but mining across millions of records from other cases.
Big Data and IBM
The other major contender for the application of data analytics and health care is IBM. Their focus on Cloud Computing goes back to their roots of the 1950s, with their lead within mainframe computers, and it is now built around their advanced computing infrastructure. In the 1990s, IBM spotted that increasing power of computers with the defeat of Garry Kasparov by the IBM Deep Blue computer.
While the real mastery was just the sheer power of searching through millions of possible moves, and finding the best, they continued with their focus onto defeating humans in the areas where they triumphed … understanding the English language. With this the IBM Watson managed to beat human opponents within Jeopardy!, and then managed to have a higher success rate in lung cancer diagnosis than leading cancer specialists. For the cancer diagnosis, Watson was sent back to medical school, and learnt how to spot lung cancer signs by analysing a whole range of unstructured data and using natural language processing.
Conclusions
There are still some concerns with the development of this system. At present it is not known, if there is an "opt-out" mechanism for patients, and current methods often involve a written statement to a GP. Along with this, Google entering health care will have a massive knock-on for those already working in the industry, and giving its status, there could be claims that it had a massive competitive advantage, and could stifle competition. One thing is for sure ... data analytics, information sharing and data gathering for health and social care is here to stay.
A good part of our research here has been looking at information sharing, trust and governance in health and social care, and we work with several great companies in this area. Our focus is to build systems which put the citizen at the centre, and to built health and social care around them.