Babylon Health

Babylon Health is a health service provider that provides remote consultations with doctors and health care professionals via text and video messaging through its mobile application.[1] The subscription for private healthcare services opened in the UK in 2013 and have since been expanded internationally to Rwanda[citation needed] and Canada. In the UK, Babylon's NHS service covers more than 40,000 registered user-patients, which has caused controversial disputes over NHS funding models.[2] There have been a number of concerns raised regarding the governance of Babylon Health, in particular the use of misleading promotional claims and the safety and quality of the advice offered by its artificially intelligent Chatbot.[3][4][5][6] In addition, for the same symptoms, cases have been reported of doctors giving diagnoses of panic attacks for female patients, and heart related issues for males, which raises concerns.[7] In April 2020, Alberta's privacy commissioner launched two investigations into Babylon, by Telus Health, over non-compliance and medical privacy concerns.[8] The commissioner encouraged doctors and patients to extend their absence while investigation was on-going. A data breach was reported in June 2020, which Babylon admitted to.[9] In addition, Babylon Health's app security score was 10/100, putting it in the “critical risk” category.[10]