DeepMind Health’s first named NHS project was Streams, a clinician-facing app for sharing test results and alerting staff to possible acute kidney injury (AKI). Despite the AI ambitions in the initiative’s launch story, the Royal Free said Streams did not use AI or machine learning. The 2016 partnership also became a major patient-data controversy, prompting scrutiny of how identifiable records were used during testing.
What was DeepMind Health’s NHS app?
On November 22, 2016, Google DeepMind announced a five-year partnership with the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust. Its first named project, Streams, was a mobile app intended to alert clinicians when test results suggested a patient might have AKI and bring relevant clinical information together for the care team. DeepMind’s launch announcement framed the work as a health technology initiative designed around clinicians’ needs.
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The app was meant to help get information to the right staff quickly and support coordination. DeepMind’s announcement projected that a fully built system could cut alert times from hours to seconds and redirect more than half a million hours a year from administration to patient care at the Royal Free. Those were company forecasts in 2016, not independently verified results.
DeepMind also described plans to expand Streams to other conditions and add features. Those plans should not be confused with capabilities demonstrated as delivered by the sources available here.
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Why doesn’t Streams use AI?
The title’s reference to bringing AI to healthcare describes DeepMind’s broader ambition, not the technology in the Royal Free app. The Trust said Streams used no AI or machine learning; it described the app’s alert logic as a simple decision tree. DeepMind likewise said the project focused on helping clinicians respond to alerts and that it did not conduct AI research or development with the Royal Free.
DeepMind’s account says discussions with clinicians shifted the work toward an immediate practical problem: making existing test results and alerts easier for staff to access. In a November 2017 post, DeepMind’s Dominic King described the distinction: “By getting existing patient data to the right nurse or doctor more quickly and simply, Streams gives them more time to focus on patients – without yet relying on AI.”
That distinction matters: Streams was a clinical communication and workflow tool, not an autonomous diagnostic system. The project’s use of existing patient information to support care should not be conflated with the proposed AI research using Royal Free data, which DeepMind says did not proceed.
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The dispute centered on the use of identifiable patient records during testing, the legal basis selected for sharing them, and whether that use matched what patients could reasonably expect. In an August 2019 statement, National Data Guardian Dame Fiona Caldicott said implied consent for direct care was not an appropriate basis for sharing data from 1.6 million patients for the testing purpose. She reported that the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) found the Royal Free had not complied with data protection law and required changes, including an independent audit. Caldicott’s statement also stressed the importance of patients’ perspectives: “It is my firm view that it is the patient’s perspective that is most important when judgements are being made about the use of their confidential information.”
The Royal Free’s account gives the Trust’s later position, not a reversal of that finding. It says the ICO recognized in July 2019 that the Trust had completed the required actions and that there were no further outstanding concerns about current Streams processing. The Trust also says patient data remained under its control and DeepMind processed it only on the Trust’s instructions. The Trust’s account should be read alongside the earlier regulatory criticism: completion of required changes did not erase the original non-compliance finding.
In the Trust’s statement, spokesperson David Myers—identified as a patient governor and kidney patient—said: “When treating kidney injury, speed matters – and yet every day patients across the UK suffer serious and avoidable problems because the system isn’t able to get their urgent test results to renal clinicians fast enough.” That is Myers’s account of the problem the app aimed to address, rather than an independently quantified finding.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What happened to DeepMind Health and Streams?
In November 2018, DeepMind said the Streams team would join Google, remain in London, and continue to make decisions about patient-data use with NHS partners. A status note on the announcement says DeepMind Health joined the Google Health family on September 18, 2019. The transition announcement documents the team and initiative’s move; it does not establish Streams as a current standalone consumer service or settle its present-day operational availability.
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Quick Recap
What the launch story does—and does not—establish
- Established: a five-year Royal Free partnership was announced in 2016, with Streams as its first named project.
- Established: Streams was designed to alert clinicians to possible AKI and bring information together; the Royal Free said it did not use AI or machine learning.
- Qualified: the proposed time savings and faster alerts were DeepMind’s projections, not independently documented outcomes.
- Established: the National Data Guardian reported an ICO finding of non-compliance concerning the data-sharing arrangement; the Royal Free later said required actions were completed and there were no outstanding concerns about current processing.
- Not established here: whether Streams remains operational today or whether all planned expansions were delivered.
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