Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

As the hon. Lady will know, it is for the local NHS to make decisions about the future of local health services; these matters are not determined in Whitehall. I understand that the Sunderland and the South Tyneside hospital trusts have formed an alliance to improve the sustainability, quality and performance of hospital services. Local commissioners did consult the public and they agreed a number of service changes in February, which will improve services for patients.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Q13. In the 1940s, access by British epidemiologists to patient data established the causal relationship between smoking and lung cancer. How will the big data and artificial intelligence, which the Prime Minister spoke about on Monday, help us transform healthcare outcomes today, and what barriers to data sharing exist in the way of that?

[The Prime Minister]

As my hon. Friend says, on Monday, I did announce that we will use data, artificial intelligence and innovation to transform the prevention, early diagnosis and treatment of chronic diseases by 2030. I have just referenced, in response to my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy), the fact that we want to see at least 50,000 more people each year being diagnosed at an early stage of prostate, ovarian, lung or bowel cancer. That will mean that, every year, around 22,000 fewer people will die within five years of their diagnosis compared with today. We are also committed to the highest possible standards in using data, which is why we brought forward the Data Protection Bill and have announced our intention to create a new centre for data ethics and innovation. Big data gives us a huge opportunity to improve services to patients in the NHS, but, of course, we must use that data very carefully, and patients need to have the confidence that it is being used carefully, and that is what we will do.