Google AI DeepMind May Help Cure Blindness, Can This New Technology Save Your Eyes?

First Posted: Jul 06, 2016 05:56 AM EDT
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In a new foray into the health sector, Google is teaming up with the British government's healthcare system to test out its artificial intelligence machine DeepMind in the fight to prevent eye diseases and blindness.

With doctors' misdiagnosing eye illness 10 to 20 percent of the time, Google's DeepMind could help increase diagnostic accuracy and efficiency. The AI could scan millions of records and learn from them in order to quickly diagnose two types of eye diseases: diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration.

DeepMind co-founder and head of DeepMind Health Mufasta Suleyman said that the goal is for the AI to understand eye scans in order to try and predict that patients that are at risk to an eye disease.

The deal was between DeepMind, Google's subsidiary company, and Moorfields Eye Hospital in London.

"With sight loss predicted to double by the year 2050, it is vital we explore the use of cutting-edge technology to prevent eye disease," according to Moorfield Hospital's National Institute for Health Research's Biomedical Research Centre in Ophthalmology Director Peng Tee Khaw.

There are over 100 million suffering from Age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy with diabetes as the leading cause of blindness from the working population. 98 percent of severe visual loss can be prevented with early detection and treatment of the diseases.

DeepMind will publish the results, algorithms and methodologies in peer-reviewed journals so that other research would be able to benefit from the project.

The only concern for some will be similar to its previous partnership with Royal Free NHS Trust, when it gave DeepMind non-consensual access to personal medical information of 1.6 million patients in hospitals across London.

Google answered that the data is necessary for the AI to learn as it was not possible for them to only get a list of patients with kidney diseases. They assured the patients that data will not be linked to or associated with the accounts, products and services of Google as the company operates independently from its parent company.

DeepMind's recent achievement was in beating a Go board game champion three times in a row after analyzing millions of Go games and playing against itself another million times.

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