Babylon Health is a London-based company that is leveraging artificial intelligence for healthcare. But its claims have recently come under fire from the Royal College of General Practitioners, a membership body for family doctors in the UK and overseas.
In a phone interview, Babylon founder and CEO Ali Parsa explained how the company’s technology works. A patient downloads the app, and the AI asks a series of questions about their condition. The AI then provides health information (rather than a medical diagnosis). It can also direct the patient to a live video consultation with a doctor.
The ultimate goal is to “tackle accessibility and affordability” in healthcare, Parsa said.
Babylon Health has deployed its technology in England, Ireland and Rwanda.
Last week, the startup put its AI to the test. Babylon had its chatbot answer questions from the MRCGP (Membership of the Royal College of General Practitioners) exam, a test GPs must take to be eligible to practice in the UK. The test isn’t publicly published, so Babylon used example questions from the RCGP and other publicly available resources.
Babylon said that its AI scored 81 percent, while the average test score for physicians over the past five years was 72 percent.
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“The company’s AI, in a series of robust tests (including the relevant sections of the MRCGP exam), has demonstrated its ability to provide health advice which is on par with practicing clinicians,” reads a news release from Babylon.
But the RCGP is skeptical of the London startup’s claims.
“No app or algorithm will be able to do what a GP does,” Martin Marshall, Vice Chair of the Royal College of GPs, said in a statement.
In addition to using their clinical knowledge, doctors also have to make evidence-based decisions and use communication to deliver personalized care to patients, he added.
“It is also the case that the exam preparation materials, used by Babylon in this research, will have been compiled for revision purposes and are not necessarily representative of the full range of questions and standard used in the actual MRCGP exam, so to say that Babylon’s algorithm has performed better than the average MRCGP candidate is dubious,” the statement said.
Furthermore, the RCGP said it doesn’t endorse Babylon or its GP at Hand tool being used the way it is in the National Health Service. Last year, Babylon teamed up with NHS to launch GP at Hand, which lets patients have a video consultation with an NHS GP.
After the RCGP’s statement, Babylon responded with comments of its own.
“We make no claims that an ‘app or algorithm will be able to do what a GP does,'” Babylon medical director Mobasher Butt said in an emailed statement. “As a GP myself, I am completely cognizant of this and that is precisely why, at Babylon, we have created a service that offers a complete continuum of care; where AI decisions are supported by real-life GPs to provide the care and emotional support that only humans are capable of.”
He said the RCGP’s commentary focuses on “shoring up an outmoded and financially self-interested status quo which solely works to the benefit of a limited number of partner GPs, rather than celebrating a scientific achievement which has the potential to improve the lives of patients and clinicians globally.”
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