Entrepreneur inspired by mother to create NHS app that alerts doctors when patients are critical

Lifesaving: the Streams app could save 10,000 lives a year
Sophie Mutevelian
Ross Lydall @RossLydall22 November 2016

The technology entrepreneur whose NHS smartphone app will alert doctors when patients fall critically ill today told how his nurse mother inspired him.

A five-year deal was announced today between the Royal Free London hospital trust and artificial intelligence firm DeepMind, a sister company of Google, giving the trust access to medical files of inpatients treated at its hospitals.

DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman said his mother Yasmine’s career inspired him to agree to the deal, which could save an estimated 10,000 lives a year if rolled out in the NHS.

He told the Standard: “My mum was a theatre nurse for 20 years at Barnet Hospital. That was [an] inspiration to me.

Entrepreneur: Mustafa Suleyman was inspired by his mother

"When I told her what I was working on, she was excited. We estimate we will save 30 minutes per day per nurse which, in time, will add up to half a million hours a year.”

The Streams app will monitor inpatient blood test results and send an alert to the phones of consultant nephrologists if acute kidney injury is detected.

AKI is a key indicator of life-threatening infections such as sepsis.

One in five patients admitted via A&E have acute kidney injury, and it is estimated to cause 40,000 deaths a year in England, a quarter of which are “preventable” if spotted quickly.

The app, which does not involve data sharing with Google services “under any circumstances”, goes live in January.

Royal Free chief executive David Sloman said: “This could transform how we use information to save lives.”

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