Matt Hancock

Babylon Health dials back some services in the UK

U.K. health tech startup Babylon Health is pulling in its horns in its home market, blaming challenging global and macroeconomic conditions for the termination of a couple of multiyear contracts it ha

UK announces a national strategy to ‘level up’ AI

The U.K. government has announced a national AI strategy — its first dedicated package aimed at boosting the country’s capabilities in and around machine learning technologies over the lon

Google confirms it’s pulling the plug on Streams, its UK clinician support app

Google is infamous for spinning up products and killing them off, often in very short order. It’s an annoying enough habit when it’s stuff like messaging apps and games. But the tech giant

UK names John Edwards as its choice for next data protection chief as gov’t eyes watering down privacy standards

The U.K. government has named the person it wants to take over as its chief data protection watchdog, with sitting commissioner Elizabeth Denham overdue to vacate the post: The Department of Digital,

UK’s MHRA says it has ‘concerns’ about Babylon Health — and flags legal gap around triage chatbots

The U.K.’s medical device regulator has admitted it has concerns about VC-backed AI chatbot maker Babylon Health. It made the admission in a letter sent to a clinician who’s been raising t

Europe seizes on social media’s purging of Trump to bang the drum for regulation

Big tech’s decision to pull the plug on president Donald Trump’s presence on their platforms, following his supporters’ attack on the US capital last week, has been seized on in Euro

Mark Zuckerberg threatened to end Facebook’s UK investment in private 2018 meeting with digital chief, warning over ‘anti-tech’ tone

Round of applause for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism — which fought for two years to obtain details of a closed door meeting between Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and the UK secretary

UK launches COVID-19 exposure notification app for England and Wales

The last two regions of the U.K. now have an official coronavirus contacts-tracing app, after the U.K. government pushed the button to launch the NHS COVID-19 app across England and Wales today. North

UK gives up on centralized coronavirus contacts-tracing app — will ‘likely’ switch to model backed by Apple and Google

The UK has given up building a centralized coronavirus contacts-tracing app and will instead switch to a decentralized app architecture, the BBC has reported. This suggests its any future app will be

Babylon Health admits ‘software error’ led to patient data breach

Babylon Health, a UK AI chatbot and telehealth startup which has been valued in excess of $2BN, has suffered an embarrassing data breach after a user of the app found he was able to access other patie

UK’s NHS COVID-19 app lacks robust legal safeguards against data misuse, warns committee

A UK parliamentary committee that focuses on human rights issues has called for primary legislation to be put in place to ensure that legal protections wrap around the national coronavirus contact tra

UK privacy and security experts warn over coronavirus app mission creep

A number of UK computer security and privacy experts have signed an open letter raising transparency and mission creep concerns about the national approach to develop a coronavirus contacts tracing ap

UK public sector failing to be open about its use of AI, review finds

A report into the use of artificial intelligence by the U.K.’s public sector has warned that the government is failing to be open about automated decision-making technologies which have the pote

Alexa, where are the legal limits on what Amazon can do with my health data?

The contract between the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) and ecommerce giant Amazon — for a health information licensing partnership involving its Alexa voice AI — has been releas

UK’s health data guardian sets a firm line for app development using patient data

The UK’s health data watchdog, the National Data Guardian (NDG), has published correspondence between her office and the national privacy watchdog which informed the ICO’s finding in 2017

The UK’s National Health Service is launching an AI lab

The UK government has announced it’s rerouting £250M (~$300M) in public funds for the country’s National Health Service (NHS) to set up an artificial intelligence lab that will work to ex

Social media firms agree to work with UK charities to set online harm boundaries

Social media giants, including Facebook-owned Instagram, have agreed to financially contribute to UK charities to fund them making recommendations that the government hopes will speed up decisions abo

UK health minister leans on social media platforms to delete anti-vax content

Social media-fueled anti-vaxxer propaganda is the latest online harm the U.K. government is targeting. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today program this morning, health secretary Matt Hancock said he

Accurx raises £8.8M Series A for its messaging app for medical teams and patients

Accurx, the U.K. startup and Entrepreneur First alumni that has developed a messaging service for doctor surgeries, has raised £8.8 million in Series A funding, TechCrunch has learned. According to m

Dating apps face questions over age checks after report exposes child abuse

The UK government has said it could legislate to require age verification checks on users of dating apps, following an investigation into underage use of dating apps published by the Sunday Times ye
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