Microsoft's AI for NHS?

Many years ago I would blog under the auspices of ComputerWorld.uk about UK educational computing. I was an open source apologist and enjoyed the collective outrage we felt when the money that the then UK government spent on Microsoft operating systems and Office software was made public.

Schools and public bodies were basically being ripped off as each upgrade iteration was released until suddenly all all came to a screeching halt. The school’s advisory quango BECTA was abolished and  schools stopped upgrading.

What happened was that an awful lot of public sector computers ended up still using Windows XP ( just ask the NHS ) though most schools and public sector businesses now use Win7; MS Office became relatively cheap and outsourcing giants such as Capita kept a fierce lid on spending.

Ah, those were the days.

Microsoft changed tack realising that the Cloud and Big Data would be the future but knowing that selling Office365 off their Azure cloud would not be a runner against Google’s ‘free’ doc suite. They got wise and made a  move on a new cash cow, aka medicine.

Put simply, medics collect data, always have, always will. Nowadays there are lots of data sitting in databases just waiting to be ‘mined’.  Big data mining is all the rage, sophisticated (you might suppose) algorithms honed by maths genii look for pattern and correlation in order to discover the meaning of life or whatever they are selling. Yes I am a skeptic but medics and economists love this stuff.

Some countries have diverse medical systems but one country has a monolithic, cradle to grave system. That’s BIGLY population data. So bigly that these data now form the basis of what goes for post grad research ( no more pesky experiments for the millennials ). Oh sorry forgot to mention the country …it’s the UK. And we have the NHS.

Today, Mrs May the UK Prime Minister has just announced that she will use (ie  fund) AI ( artificial intelligence) to save ‘thousands of lives’ and cure cancer by mining all that data.
She will need help to do this of course. Luckily Cara McGoogan reported in The Telegraph last September about Microsoft’s new Cambridge-based Health Care AI research unit!

Maybe I’m too skeptical, too untrusting, too suspicious: maybe the words Cambridge and data-harvesting are not the best combo at present, thanks to London based Cambridge Analytica’s Facebook misbehaviour. But I’m sure nothing will happen to the NHS’s data in Microsoft’s hands. Maybe even it’s not Microsoft being awarded this work but my gut-data says otherwise.

I just hope HM Gov got a good price or it’ll look like deja-vu all over again.

I can feel a Freedom of Info request coming on.