this is bbc news — the headlines: aid agencies in syria say over 50,000 people have fled the rebel—held areas of eastern ghouta, in the last few days alone. dozens of buses are heading towards shelters for the displaced. earlier a turkish air strike hit a major hospital in afrin, killing nine people. a war of words has broken out between london and moscow — after the british foreign secretary said it was "overwhelmingly likely" that vladimir putin personally took the decision to use a nerve agent on the former russian spy, sergei skripal and his daughter. the kremlin says the accusations are unforgivable. the former deputy director of the fbi has been sacked, by the us attorney—general less than two days before he was due to retire. andrew mccabe was deeply involved in the investigations into hillary clinton's use of email and russia's alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election campaign. in a few moments it'll be time for newswatch. but first, here's click. for almost 70 years,

the uk's national health service has been a free service at the point of care. but that model is under strain as the population ages and chronic health conditions increase while resources shrink. a recent study by the royal college of physicians showed that almost two thirds of doctors think that patient safety has deteriorated with one doctor saying we are not robots. we are human staff with limits. should the nhs turn to robots to ease the strain on human staff? jane has been looking at how data driven technology could transform care in the nhs. could artificial intelligence help save the nhs? more people are looking

at innovative ways to ease the workload of doctors and nurses. computer programmes can rapidly analyse huge quantities of information in ways that humans do not have the time nor brain capacity to do. in 2016, click filmed google‘s deep mind at moorfield's eye hospital. they were developing an algorithm to identify abnormalities in eye scans. i am going to see three other projects integrating ai and data collection for monitoring, automation and decreasing waiting times. dementia is now the leading cause of death in the uk. at the manor hospital in coventry, software is being tested to remotely monitor patients on the dementia ward. this is one of the rooms on the ward. it looks like any other hospital room except in this one there are two infrared illuminators and an optical sensor monitoring my movements including when i'm asleep.

0xehealth uses a standard digital camera and the tongue—twisting science of photoplethysmography. every time your heart beats, your skin briefly flashes red. we can not see this but the sensor in the camera can detect these so—called microblushes. it even picks up my vital signs when i am hiding under a table in the room as those microblushes can still be seen on my arm. there is an alert if i leave my bed. and the nurse can click on a live feed to see what is happening and determine whether they need to come and check on me right away. for the staff, initially, when it looked like we had a camera in a box in a room, they were not happy about it. but when we spent some time with 0xehealth, they explained to them and they see how it works, they love it. they love the fact it gives you an extra... an extra support. the project is in the pilot stage

and is awaiting medical certification. the data collected is being analysed remotely by a team in oxford and will be used to train the programme to be more predictive. we have never had this capability as a species, to constantly get heart rate, breathing rate, movement and routine data. there is no reason as we combine and we fuse the data using ai we cannot detect the onset of dementia or prevent it getting worse. we can detect problems early so you can stay in your own home or a comfortable setting without coming into hospital. that will save a huge amount of time. saving critical time was the motivation behind automating processes at nhs blood and transplant. a500 people receive a transplant each year, but 6500 are on the list. every day, three people die waiting for a transplant. a lot of information needs to be sifted through to make life—and—death decisions. the nhs is now using public cloud technology from ibm to help maintain huge databases that used to be

managed with a marker and a whiteboard. by working with some of this automated technology we can make sure we are making the best possible decisions and that our clinical teams are thinking through the best outcomes for all of the patients on the transplant waiting list, and that our staff, who are often working until three in the morning in a high—pressure environment, needing to allocate organs quickly, they are supported by this technology. collecting all this personal data has led some to ask in the future, the team hopes that artificial intelligence will be able to predict how long people will be on the waiting list for an organ. there is an average waiting time of two weeks to see a doctor in the uk. this can drop to two hours if you register with gp at hand. you can sign up if you live or work within certain zones of london. you need to give up your regular practice doctor and register with gp at hand's remote surgery.

26,000 people have registered so far. i had a chance to test it out, pretending i had a case of food poisoning. first i went through a triage with a chat bot on the app who recommended i speak remotely to a real—life human doctor. the doctor recommends further care and can even send a prescription to a pharmacy. the artificial intelligence in the app draws on billions of data points and can cross reference the latest medical research from journals and studies around the world. you use artificial intelligence to tell you whether or not to see a doctor. you are always free to see a doctor anyway but what we find is that 40% of the people who get reassured that they have everything they need, they stop there. the app has faced criticism from the royal college of gps to say that younger users are being cherry picked for the service. nhs england lodged a formal objection to the planned rollout beyond london. whenever anybody comes up with a great, exciting idea they are desperate to see it rolled out everywhere.

i would say we need to give people safe, fair and equitable care. if we roll things out too quickly without ensuring that safety and fairness, we run the risk of causing unintended harm. so it is wise and sensible that independent evaluations are now going on of these new technologies so that people can be reassured that they are safe and they are fine for everybody. that they are safe and they are fair for everybody. i think it is wrong. i genuinely think that slowing down what people want isjust not right. i cannot understand why people are hesitant. often it is because they are scared of new technology. they do not know what the consequences are. and that is fine. they need to check that and reassure themselves. there is nothing wrong with that. i have seen three ways companies are working with data to help with monitoring, automation and decreasing waiting times. all areas that could help an overstressed health service. could artificial intelligence help to save the nhs? it is an exciting development worldwide but never more so than in healthcare and there are certainly things ai

can help as we to plough through data we already have, and provide answers to the questions we didn't even know needed answering. but let's be clear, ai will never replace person—to—person interaction. the touch of a doctor, the looking deep into someone‘s eyes and recognising their physical, social and psychological make—up of the person is what matters, notjust a bleeding leg or a headache. it is much more than that and ai, it will be quite a long time before ai comes close. you think it ever will? i will be stunned if within my lifetime ai ever replaces a doctor. we are going to interrupt this broadcast with some breaking news

coming into us here at the bbc. it is a world first, bbc click presenter spencer kelly has been replaced by a robot. it has been dubbed robospen and the artifical intelligence machine is apparently capable of a whole host of emotions as well as understanding and writing stories and crucially, he neverforgets his lines. robospenjoins the now from the factory that created him. over to you. sounds like you said i was artificially intelligent. as a robot i am often asked to pose for photos and tv reports about al. while i am a humaoid robot, i am not intelligent. everything i am saying is written by a human. the point is, robots and ai are not the same thing. observe my articulated hands with four independent fingers powered by eight air cylinders. engineering arts has made a name for itself by making robotic performance, actors and communicators. which, according to will, is pretty much the only reason

the world might need humanoid robots. humanoid robots are great for entertainment and communication, if you want something that interacts with people, the best way to do that is to make something person—shaped. so if you think star wars, c3p0 — the robot that talks a lot, has a personality, doesn't do a lot of useful things. will and his team design and build robots here from scratch from the aluminium bones to the rubbery spines and plastic shells. while the robots they have made are more c3p0, the next wave our way into the uncanny valley. oh my goodness, it has just come to life with the eyes there. you have seen silence of the lambs, haven't you? that is very eerie, that is.

if you know what i mean. will is fascinated with how the human body works and a lot of this research concentrates on making natural looking body movements that are also very quiet. it is something that he believes might find a place in the field of prosthetics, although he says there is still a lot of work to be done. i don't have a single precision part in my body. how can i achieve this level of precision with these organic, bones and bits of mushy flash. these organic, bones and bits of mushy flesh. one of the biggest problems we have is that there is nothing as good as human muscle. so for all of this motor development that we have done, we don't come anywhere near to what a human can do. where you will see humanoid robots, you will see them in a commercial context, so you might go into a shop and you might see a robot in there that is trying to sell you something. don't worry about all the clever ai, that's really going to stay on your computer, on your smartphone, on a webpage. it'd not going chase you up the stairs any time soon.

it's not going chase you up the stairs any time soon. that's it for the short cut a click this week. the full version is up on i player. andreas beck suite for pa rt i player. andreas beck suite for part two at our special look at the future of work. don't forget we are on twitter at bbc click and on facebook to. isn't it time you are leaving? 0k, we're off. hello, and welcome to newswatch with me, samira ahmed. was the bbc too slow to report on claims that up to 1,000 children in telford may have been victims of abuse by grooming gangs of mainly pakistani heritage? and, as calls are made for the kremlin—backed tv station russia today to be taken off the air in britain, should question time have chosen one

of its presenters as a guest? first, the nerve agent attack on sergei skripal and his daughter yulia continued to dominate the news agenda this week, raising many questions for bbc news. one was the extent to which theresa may's unequivocal statement that russia was culpable for the attack should be taken on trust, or challenged. some members of the audience felt the bbc had erred too much in the former direction, with derek culson writing... and george skinner agreed. the prime minister announced on wednesday a number of measures to be taken against russia — but not one that had been widely

mooted, taking the television station russia today off the air in the uk. the broadcaster is widely regarded as a mouthpiece for the kremlin, which made the choice of one of the panellists on bbc 0ne's question time a surprise to some people. a broadcaster with the russian—funded tv channel rt, and presenter of a weekly current affairs programme on that channel, afshin rattansi. that guest booking was already causing concern before the programme went out on thursday, with matthew holbert tweeting... and dan watched the programme and wondered... it's not the first time journalists from russia today have appeared on bbc news, and we asked the bbc

whether it was appropriate for them to do so. they told us...