DeepMind将推出首款商业产品：30秒准确诊断一系列眼疾

据外媒报道，英国人工智能集团DeepMind已打造出一款能够实时诊断复杂眼疾的设备的产品原型。这是Deepmind作为Alphabet旗下公司迈向首款医疗设备的重要一步。

DeepMind, the British artificial intelligence group, has built a working prototype of a device that can diagnose complex eye diseases in real time, in a major step towards the Alphabet-owned company’s first medical device.

DeepMind首款商业产品

Artificial intelligence group DeepMind readies first commercial product

在本月的一次人工智能系统的现场演示中，DeepMind对一名患者进行了视网膜扫描，并对该女性患者的眼睛进行了实时诊断。扫描结果由谷歌云中的一组算法进行分析，这些算法在大约30秒内就给出了（疾病）紧急程度评级和详细诊断。

In a live demonstration this month of its AI system, where a patient agreed to be examined publicly, DeepMind performed a retinal scan and real-time diagnosis of her eye. The scan was analysed by a set of algorithms in Google Cloud, which provided an urgency score and a detailed diagnosis, all in roughly 30 seconds.

该系统能够检测包括青光眼、糖尿病性视网膜病变和老年性黄斑变性在内的一系列眼病，其准确度与世界领先专家水平相当。该产品原型是在过去三年中与伦敦Moorfields眼科医院合作开发的。有关这项研究的细节发表在去年8月的科学杂志《自然医学》(Nature Medicine)上。

The system is capable of detecting a range of eye diseases — including glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration — with the same level of accuracy as the world’s leading specialists. It was developed in conjunction with London’s Moorfields Eye Hospital over the past three years. Details about the research were published in Nature Medicine, the scientific journal, last August.

青光眼

最近几个月，Deepmind公司与Moorfields的团队合作开发了一款产品，不过（产品）尚未获得任何监管部门的批准。

In recent months, the company has collaborated with the team at Moorfields to build a working product, although it has not yet received any regulatory approval.

DeepMind的一名发言人表示，如果研究结果最终的产品能通过临床试验和监管批准，那么Moorfields医院的医生将可免费使用该产品，最初期限为5年。

A DeepMind spokesperson said that if the research results in a product that passes clinical trials and regulatory approvals, doctors at Moorfields will be able to use the product for free for an initial period of five years.

Moorfields医院

DeepMind项目负责人、高级临床医生艾伦(Alan Karthikesalingam)表示，这是一个重要的里程碑，标志着可供普通医生使用的临床工具的诞生。

Alan Karthikesalingam, project lead and senior clinician scientist at DeepMind, said it was a “major milestone” towards a bedside tool that could be used by GPs.

“我们现在一直所做的这项研究，其中最困难的就是，如何将这种类型的早期研究系统应用到云技术中，以建立一个能真正用于实践的系统原型，”艾伦在伦敦出席一场健康活动中说道。而上文中该公司人工智能系统的现场诊断演示就是在这次活动中进行的。

“What we’ve been working on really hard is how to take this type of early-stage research system and start to move it into a cloud technology, building a prototype of a system really used in practice,” Mr Karthikesalingam said at the Wired Health event in London where the demo took place.

临床工具

艾伦表示，人工智能工具的目标就是弄清楚“某患者需不需要联系一名专家，如果需要，那么需求程度有多紧急，以及为什么这么紧急？”

He said the goal of the AI tool is to figure out “should someone call a specialist and if so, how urgently and why?”

2016年，DeepMind在联合创始人穆斯塔法·苏莱曼(Mustafa Suleyman)的领导下，作为其应用团队的一部分成立了健康部门。该团队的目标一直是在现实环境中开发和部署人工智能技术，包括家庭医生诊所和医院，但到目前为止还没有商业产品，该部门尚未产生任何收入。

DeepMind founded its health division, as part of its applied team led by co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, in 2016. The goal of this team has been to develop and deploy AI technologies in real-world settings, including GP surgeries and hospitals, but so far it has no commercial products and the division has yet to generate any revenues.

DeepMind创始人穆斯塔法·苏莱曼Mustafa Suleyman

此外，在英国和美国，该公司其他健康项目还包括一个医疗诊断应用程序，以及一个使用人工智能来分析医学扫描的（数据）流和程序。

Other health projects include a medical diagnosis app, Streams and programs using AI to analyse medical scans in the UK and the US.

去年11月，DeepMind宣布将把其健康部门的控制权移交给加州一个新的谷歌健康部门，这表明该公司计划将努力进行扩张和商业化。

In November, DeepMind announced that it would transfer control of its health unit to a new Google Health division in California, an indication of its plans to expand and commercialise its efforts.

人工智能医疗服务市场正在迅速扩张，分析师预计，到2021年，该市场规模将达到66亿美元。

The market for AI healthcare services is rapidly expanding, with analysts expecting it to reach $6.6bn by 2021.

谷歌医疗

“这可能是使谷歌成为可靠的外包研发合作伙伴的更大战略的一部分。这也证明其对人工智能的应用可以对结果产生重大影响，从而建立必要的可信度，因为（谷歌）将进一步进入医疗保健领域，这对其来说可能是一项重要的业务，”调研机构CB Insights前医疗行业分析师尼基尔·克里希南(Nikhil Krishnan)说道。

“This is likely part of a larger strategy to make Google a reliable outsourced R&D partner. Demonstrating that its applications of AI can have a significant impact on outcomes builds necessary credibility as they move deeper into healthcare, which as a whole could be a significant business for them,” said Nikhil Krishnan, former healthcare analyst at CB Insights.

“然而，作为一项业务，单凭眼睛筛查可能无法撼动谷歌的核心搜索及广告业务，尤其是考虑到他们将承担的风险，”尼基尔说道。

“However as a business, eye screening alone probably wouldn’t move the needle relative to Google’s core search/ad business, especially considering the risk they’d be taking on it,” he added.

医疗行业分析

在美国，食品药物监督管理局（FDA）批准的医疗人工智能算法数量大幅增加，从2017年的全年两项增至2018年的每月一到两项。其中有一项来自总部位于爱荷华州的初创企业IDx的算法，与DeepMind一样，该算法可以实时扫描和诊断糖尿病性视网膜病变，并已在整个欧洲的临床护理中得到应用。美国食药监管局表示，这是第一个不需要临床医生解释图像或结果就能提供医疗决策的人工智能系统，这使得那些通常不会参与到眼科（工作）的医务人员就能使用该系统。

In the US, the Food and Drug Administration’s approvals of medical AI algorithms has expanded dramatically, from two in 2017 to one or two a month in 2018. One is an algorithm from Iowa-based start-up IDx that, like DeepMind, can scan and diagnose diabetic retinopathy in real time and is already used in clinical care across Europe. The FDA said it was the first AI system to provide a medical decision “without the need for a clinician to also interpret the image or results, which makes it usable by healthcare providers who may not normally be involved in eyecare”.

美国食品药物监督管理局（FDA）

DeepMind声称，其产品不仅能提供诊断，还能准确解释得出结论的过程以及结果的确定性，这对医疗专业人士来说至关重要。

DeepMind claims its product will not just offer diagnoses, but also be able to explain exactly how it arrived at its conclusion and how certain it is of the result, which is crucial for healthcare professionals.

“对于眼科医生来说，这真令人惊讶。你能看到的是（人工智能）分割每一个点，在这张扫描图中大约有6500万个数据点（创建出）超高分辨率的图像，”Moorfields医院眼科顾问医生皮尔斯（Pearse Keane）说道。“我们必须像对待任何医疗设备一样，用同样严格的标准来验证算法，而我个人认为是，眼科将是人工智能从根本上改变的第一个医学专业。”

“For an ophthalmologist, this is jaw-dropping. What you can see is [the AI] has segmented every single point, about 65m data points in this scan [creating] super high-resolution images,” said Pearse Keane, a consultant ophthalmologist at Moorfields. “We have to bring the same levels of rigour [to] how we validate the algorithms that we would with any medical device, but my personal prejudice is that ophthalmology will be the first speciality of medicine that is fundamentally transformed by AI.”

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文章链接：http://tech.qq.com/a/20190331/003937.htm

外网原文链接：https://www.ft.com/content/0e099914-514a-11e9-9c76-bf4a0ce37d49