NHS: Artificial Intelligence

Debate between Lord O'Shaughnessy and Baroness Grender

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

The case the noble Baroness highlighted brings to the fore both the potential benefits and risks. There are tremendous benefits in having personalised healthcare, and we all want to see that delivered. At the same time, if data is not used safely and securely we lose the public’s trust. If we do not have that trust, we will not be able to get the changes that we want. The Government respect the decisions made by the Information Commissioner and National Data Guardian in their judgments about poor practice at the Royal Free. I am pleased to say that the hospital has responded well to these. We are doing a couple of things to make more systematic changes. First is implementing the proper data standards of the GDPR in one month’s time. We will also make sure that National Data Guardian’s 10 data standards are written into every NHS contract so that, when it comes to procurement, there is understanding about the kind of things they should and should not be doing to safeguard data.

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree with the recommendations of the AI Select Committee, regarding NHS data, that a framework for the sharing of data is now urgent or needs to be delivered by the end of 2018? Does he support the need to digitalise, in consistent formats, by 2022? Evidence received by the committee suggests that failure to do so risks our missing out on profound opportunities from AI, because the current approach to data storage—especially among different NHS trusts—is outdated and piecemeal.