April 5, 2018 Print this page
Babylon, the British digital health start-up that uses artificially intelligent algorithms to assess illness, has struck a deal with Chinese internet giant Tencent to offer its technology on the group’s WeChat social messaging platform.
The deal will give WeChat’s almost 1bn users the ability to message medical symptoms to Babylon’s app, which will send back healthcare advice, and propel the company into China’s huge medical market.
It is the second international deal signed by Babylon in the past two months, following a similar arrangement it signed with Saudi Arabia’s ministry of health last month.
Tencent and Babylon did not disclose the financial terms of the licensing agreement or who will control the user data. But the deal is a boon for the UK company as it pushes to expand its reach internationally, especially as it has faced challenges in its home market.
“We are incredibly focused, now that we have built the technology, on taking that technology global,” said Ali Parsa, Babylon’s chief executive, who founded the London-based company five years ago.
Babylon has more than 1.4m users to whom it offers paid-for video consultations with human doctors in addition to a free automated symptom-checker. Almost half its users are based in the UK, with the remainder spread across Rwanda and Ireland.
Mr Parsa has sought partnerships with big tech companies and public health services such as the UK’s National Health Service, which is increasingly willing to experiment with new technologies to ease the burden on doctors, cope with public spending cuts and an ageing population.
Babylon’s deals — which include an agreement with Bupa, the private healthcare provider, and the NHS’s non-emergency helpline 111, to help provide triage services for non-critical health problems — have been relatively small.
The company agreed a second trial with the NHS in November to allow about 1m Londoners to switch from their local surgeries to use the app as a first point of contact.
But the scheme has remained in trial mode amid a backlash from UK doctors, who say Babylon is “cherry-picking” the easiest patients, and say the app could be unsafe or increase pressure on the public health system.
Daniel Ray, director of data for NHS Digital, the body in charge of healthcare data in the UK, told the Financial Times that using AI in healthcare offered huge possibilities but also raised questions about safety, data privacy and accountability. “There is the potential for a big opportunity for artificial intelligence in the NHS but there are a number of things that we need to do to make sure that we get it right through regulation,” he said.
The NHS has launched a working group to discuss regulation for AI after a number of other technological breakthroughs including by Google’s DeepMind, which has developed an algorithm for analysing medical images.
Demis Hassabis and Mustafa Suleyman, founders of DeepMind, are investors and advisers in Babylon.
Doctors have also raised questions about the efficacy of Babylon’s diagnostic tools, pointing to biases in AI algorithms that learn from historic data sets to predict future patterns.
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Babylon says it is registered as a so-called “class 1 medical device manufacturer” under rules set by the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products regulatory authority.
But Margaret McCartney, a GP and healthcare writer, said existing standards are ill-equipped to analyse artificial intelligence. “I am concerned that they have not commissioned adequate safety testing,” she said. “Class 1 [status] is what you give to spectacles . . . I suspect there isn’t a sufficient regulatory framework in place to look at this sort of thing.”
The challenges with the NHS could be one reason why Babylon is looking for opportunities abroad.
Sam Smith, a campaign co-ordinator at medConfidential, an organisation that lobbies for patient confidentiality, said the company was likely to meet lower resistance in countries with less developed health services and regulations.
“This sort of thing makes sense on communications platforms particularly,” said Mr Smith. “If your doctor is also on WeChat then you’re never deleting your WeChat account.”
Tencent has invested in We Doctor, a Chinese online healthcare provider, but said that Babylon was a “leader in this technology”.
“Tencent is committed to improve our users’ lives through the means of digitalisation and technology,” said Meng Zhang, general manager of Tencent Medical.
Ali Parsa is no stranger to using the private sector to rethink the delivery of healthcare — and the controversies that often come with such efforts.
Ten years before the 53-year-old former Goldman Sachs banker launched Babylon in 2014, he set up Circle, a private healthcare company that he led as chief executive until 2012.
The Aim-listed group became the country’s first private company to manage a National Health Service hospital, taking over the running of Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire after it fell into deep financial difficulties.
Circle argued at the time that it could provide better, cheaper care by improving efficiency, as well as giving doctors and nurses more control over decision making.
But the company was forced to pull out of its management contract to run the hospital three years ago, amid mounting losses and heavy criticism of its performance.
At the time, the news was received as a sign that the NHS was not ready for private sector involvement.
But with Babylon, Mr Parsa has again set his eyes on working with the NHS while also looking to deploy its services internationally given the challenges that have emerged in the UK.
According to analysts, his success in the UK this time will depend on convincing the government and regulators that the app — and its use of data — is safe.
“Right now, Babylon are the experts in this, but tomorrow we don’t know,” said Matteo Natalucci, an independent analyst focusing on the relationship between technology and government. “But in the NHS and any government project, partnership is key.”
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