Siri to identify suicidal patients

SMART assistants like Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri are to be used to analyse patient conversations and spot if they are suicidal.

A new report published into the technological future of health services urges the use of robots and artificial intelligence and said that the NHS in London was already planning to embed AI into its mental health services to pick up those in danger of self-harm.

Mental health patients can already access online programmes to aid their recovery and it is hoped they would hold conversations with ‘triage bots’ that would pick up on warning signs.

Facebook has been screening users’ posts for suicidal thoughts since 2017 and similar technology can now pick up worrying phrases that are spoken out loud.

The report, led by US academic Eric Topol, said a ‘technological revolution’ was under way which would see 90pc of all NHS jobs requiring digital skills within 20 years. (© Daily Telegraph, London)