Babylon Health invests £100 million into 500 new jobs and AI research

Ali
Parsa.
Babylon

• British startup Babylon Health says it will invest £100
  million from its own balance sheet into hiring hundreds of
  scientists to push forward the use of artificial intelligence
  in health.
• Babylon already has several contracts with the NHS, the
  UK’s national health service, and its AI medical service is
  embedded in Samsung phones in the US.
• The company will move to a new headquarters in London
  within the next 18 months to house its new staff.
• CEO Ali Parsa was outspoken in his rejection of
  criticism from doctors, who have pointed out that Babylon’s
  claims are not peer-reviewed and that its “GP at Hand” app may
  be having a negative impact on GP surgeries.

British medical startup Babylon Health will invest £100 million
in hiring more than 500 researchers, scientists, and engineers
over the next year to develop the use of artificial intelligence
in healthcare.

Chief executive Ali Parsa said this would more than double
Babylon’s current team to more than 1,000 staff, and that the
company would eventually move into new headquarters in London
over the next 18 months to house the new recruits. The firm is
currently headquartered in Kensington, London, and is planning to
take over the rest of the offices in its building. 

The artificial intelligence research will build on software that
Babylon showed off in late June. The company claimed at the time
that its AI could assess common conditions more accurately than
doctors. The idea is to expand the AI from primary care, which
refers to the stage when patients first approach their GPs, to
helping to diagnose and manage chronic diseases, which is
currently threatening to overwhelm the UK’s NHS health service.

Babylon’s announcement coincided with an endorsement from health
secretary Matt Hancock, who has pledged to reform the NHS with
technology.

But the company has come under considerable scrutiny and
criticism from the medical community.

Specifically,
doctors have criticised the “GP at Hand” app, which is
powered by Babylon and offers patients video appointments through
an app. The worry is that Babylon would receive NHS funding for
looking after younger, fitter patients who would be more likely
to use a digital service. That would leave physical GP surgeries
with the burden and expense of looking after elderly patients
with complex needs.

They have also criticised Babylon’s June claims about its AI
chatbot, namely that its claims had not been peer-reviewed.
Babylon did publish an explanation about how its AI worked on its
site, though it’s
listed under the “marketing” section.

In a call with Business Insider, chief executive Ali Parsa
dismissed the criticism that Babylon was cherry-picking younger
patients as “complete nonsense.” 

He said not only were older patients increasingly using GP at
Hand — though he didn’t give figures — but added that surgeries
are paid less for looking after younger, fitter patients. “The
cherries are actually the elderly,” he said.

Asked about whether Babylon would submit its AI research for peer
review, he said that model of waiting 18 months for submissions
to be accepted to an academic journal was outdated.

He added that patients themselves were satisfied with the
technology.

“One person every few seconds is using our technology,” he said,
citing a net promoter score of 82, a metric usually used by
marketing departments to measure customer satisfaction. “We
published the paper, we showed the methodology… the only thing
we didn’t do was this situation  of waiting 18 months for a
peer-reviewed paper.”

Parsa said the company had to submit its paperwork to medical
organisations such as the MHRA and the US Food and Drug
Administration. “Everybody can see our methodology but this
peer-review model … which two giants of journals advocate
massively, was created in the 19th century, when science moved at
snail pace.” (Scientific
American suggests the birth of peer review was in 1731.)

Parsa’s criticism is unlikely to win over the cynics. His
view is that technology moves too quickly to wait for a lengthy
evaluation process.

Asked if the startup was now profitable, Parsa said licensing its
technology to partners such as Samsung and Chinese internet giant
had been hugely lucrative, and said the firm was in and out of
profitability. He said the firm was focused on growth and
expanding its capabilities.