Now Healthcare Group lands multi-million investment

The company behind Dr Now and Now GP has landed a multi-million pound investment to develop its artificial intelligence (AI) products.

Now Healthcare Group received a £4 million investment from health insurance provider Medicash on 19 June.

The money will go towards developing AI and machine learning work, the company said.

Lee Dentith, chief executive and founder of Now Healthcare Group, said in a statement that the money will allow both companies to “be able to develop new and exciting products for the insurance market in a live environment”.

“The facility to also test how we can meld NHS services and manage chronic care patients through the NHS is also very exciting for us.”

The company is one of the first two digital GP services to pass inspections by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

The regulator gave Dr Now and Babylon Health a provisional clean bill of health with their services rated as “safe”.

Babylon Health announced in April that it had raised about £50 million to further develop its artificial intelligence clinical diagnosis capabilities.

Babylon says the new AI tool will help clinicians by providing them with diagnosis of more routine conditions. Planned capabilities include using natural language processing to take notes in patient consultations.

Sue Weir, chief executive of Medicash, said that the company “has enjoyed several years of growth and is always looking for new ways to innovate in the health cash plan sector”.

“Healthcare delivery will change dramatically over the next few years and we, at Medicash, want to be at the forefront of the evolution.”

The most high profile AI company making waves in the NHS is DeepMind Health, the AI arm of Google.

DeepMind hit the headlines for its work with the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, where health data was transferred without patient knowledge.

The resulting furore, along with the long shadow cast by care.data, indicates the importance of communicating clearly with patients about who has access to their health data.

This month is due to see the government’s long awaited response to Dame Fiona Caldicott’s third review on information security and governance that was published this time last year.

She said that trusts should make security control as high a priority as financial control, and recommends a more rigorous IG Toolkit for trusts.