Innovating with medical AI
- publish258
- Dec 17, 2023
- 3 min read
Updated: May 22
Philip Johnson at health tech start-up Walk with Path on why an article by James Cooper at Minesoft about innovating with medical AI is so timely
Philip Johnson
‘Innovating with Medical AI’ by James Cooper of Minesoft, is a fascinating read – it’s also extremely timely. The British Medical Journal recently reported the award of a £480 millon contract by the NHS for its federated data platform to ‘US spy technology firm’, Palantir. (BMJ 21 November 2023). Founded by Trump-supporting billionaire Peter Thiel with support from the CIA’s venture capital fund, Palantir will sell software licenses that will sit across NHS Trusts and let users connect disparate sets of data.
Getting software and different programmes to talk to each other can be a very good thing but this may mark the start of a challenging period. In a very short time, AI has become accessible to us all and is offering all sorts of potential benefits in every imaginable aspect of our lives, including personalized medicine based on individual genetics and biomarkers. At the same time, questions are being raised for owners of medical data and those seeking to use AI to transform data into valuable information. While the benefits should be realised to improve the health of everyone, it looks as if the ultimate beneficiaries will be a select group of company owners and shareholders.
Understanding the IP will be key to getting the most out of the myriad possibilities that AI is creating in medicine – and beyond. James Cooper outlines the prizes, which are already being realised and saving lives, such as the NHS’s Mammography Intelligent Assessment which is bringing together analysis of images with patients’ medical history, resulting in interventions that are more accurate and an astonishing 30 times faster.
Interestingly, Cooper highlights the challenge that, outside the US, software alone cannot be patent protected, resulting in innovators not patenting actual tools but tools ‘used in a specific way for a given purpose’. Things get more complex with different IP regimes, with the need for careful structuring of claims across different jurisdictions to ensure rights are protected globally.
As if matters are not complicated enough, Cooper also raises the recent and rapid emergence of India as a key jurisdiction in this field, as well as the additional need to consider the implications GDPR in each territory. Cooper confirms that trial data, in combination with the work of clinicians and medical experts, is a ‘force multiplier’ that will reduce lead times and improve accuracy and patient outcomes. AI will be key to enabling effective searching of increasing complex data and the retrieval of relevant documentation and enable the power of patents to be leveraged, but effective navigation will be critical to securing effective outcomes.
Great care is needed in finding the path in the future of healthcare between realising the amazing potential through AI and an appropriate IP strategy, ensuring the data that belongs to each and every one of us is being used appropriately. If done well, this is just the start of an extremely exciting time for IP, medicine and all of our futures. It remains to be seen how personal data can be protected and, in the UK particularly, why it may not be the NHS that ultimately benefits from the amazing treasure trove of data it holds.
• Philip Johnson is design and research leader at Walk with Path, a health tech start-up, designing smart insoles for those losing the feeling in their feet through diseases such as Parkinson’s.
• The article by James Cooper at Minesosft, ‘Innovating with medical AI’, appears in ‘Winning with IP: Managing intellectual property today’, fourth edition, Novaro Publishing, November 2023. More details here.
