Google to use machine learning to detect blindness, collaborate with NHS

United States: Google, a United States technology giant acquired DeepMind, an artificial intelligence company in 2014 to set its foothold in artificial intelligence market.

Recently, Google’s DeepMind is working in collaboration with NHS Foundation Trust to collect detailed eye scans to create an artificial intelligence machine learning system which will work as blindness detection system in future.

The collaboration will help Google’s DeepMind to collect more than one million eye scans in five years and would help in devising the algorithm of artificial intelligence system to detect sight-threatening eye conditions.

NHS’s Moorfields Eye Hospital would be sharing the eye scan data with the company. The hospital would be sharing two type of eye scan - traditional fundus images (photograph of retina at the back of eye) and optical coherence tomography (cross section of retina). The two scans would give a detail picture of eye.

TechSci Research analyses that Google’s DeepMind initiative would simplify the complex and time-consuming process of eye scans and would help the doctors to identify the eye illness beforehand. Further, Google is working aggressively on various healthcare artificial intelligence projects which is expected to set the foothold of the company in artificial intelligence in coming years. In May 2016, it announced an artificial intelligence machine learning project which would help in detection of diabetic retinopathy in eye.

According to the recent report published by TechSci Research, “United States Artificial Intelligence Market, By Application (Speech Recognition, Image Recognition, etc.), By Region, and By End User (Consumer Electronics, Security & Access Control, etc.) Competition Forecast & Opportunities, 2011-2021” the market for artificial intelligence in the US is projected to grow at a CAGR of around 75% during 2016 - 2021. Growing trend of integration of video surveillance with artificial intelligence for video analysis, coupled with rising government spending on cyber security solutions integrated with real time analytics and artificial intelligence is expected to boost artificial intelligence market in the United States over the next five years. In 2015, the U.S. artificial intelligence market was highly fragmented, with presence of a huge number of start-ups in the country. However, the market is expected to undergo consolidation in the coming years, with tech giants such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Intel, Amazon, IBM, etc., thrusting on inorganic expansion in the country’s artificial intelligence market. Research and developmental activities on integration of 3D printing, artificial intelligence and neuro-technology are expected to augment artificial intelligence adoption in the US healthcare market.