Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare

Julie Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2019 Westminster Hall

[Julie Cooper (Burnley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I thank the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) for securing this debate on a very important subject. I welcome the Minister to her place. I, too, am very pleased to be talking about something other than Brexit. I thank all hon. Members for their informed contributions, and I pay tribute to the hon. Members for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for sharing their personal family experiences. As the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) said, that always adds poignancy to debates and keeps us rooted in reality. I thank the APPG on heart and circulatory diseases for its excellent report, “Putting patients at the heart of artificial intelligence”, which I thoroughly enjoyed reading. I learned a great deal from it.

This is a fascinating debate. When Charles Babbage created the difference engine in the 19th century, he could not have envisaged where modern computing would take us. We are living in a brave new world. We are in the midst of a technological revolution that is already massively transforming our lives. Artificial intelligence is already widely used at our airports and in our homes. Virtual care assistants are being trialled, and driverless cars will soon be a common sight on our roads. It would be strange therefore if we did not take full advantage of the contribution that AI can make to healthcare.

There are many different types of AI. I am not a scientist and do not understand all the complexities of AI—although I can text—but I do understand that it involves a computer equipped with a sophisticated algorithm capable of analysing thousands of sets of data. A computer learns patterns from the data and is able to make predictions based on it. The more data the computer has, the smarter it gets. Tasks that require extraordinary attention to detail, such as radiography, diagnosis, robot-assisted surgery, administration and many others, can be transformed using AI. The prospects are exciting. The ability to deliver early and speedy diagnosis and to develop personalised treatment plans is welcome in a health service besieged by unprecedented demand, long waiting lists and staff shortages.

AI is a game changer for the NHS and healthcare in general. The UK has the potential to be the world leader in digital-assisted healthcare. In our lifetimes, there will come a point when conditions like cancers and strokes can be pre-detected instantly from simple scans, enabling the patient to get the very best early intervention treatment. Only this week, researchers at Oxford University reported that they have developed artificial intelligence that will be able to detect, from a scan of an apparently healthy individual, heart attacks that are 10 years away.

We must be careful, however, in enabling this revolution. Technology is a double-edged sword, and for every monster it destroys, it has the potential to create one in its place, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) reminded us. We must be grounded in reality. It is easy to get excited about a vision, but we must keep bringing ourselves back to what it means to real people, and what the potential dangers are. We must proceed with caution. Above all, we must ensure that AI is not something that is done to patients. We must proceed with an engaged and well-informed population. Legislation and regulation must keep pace with scientific innovation. No one wants to see unnecessary regulation. I note the points made by the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire.

It is absolutely vital, however, that the regulation is adequate and keeps pace. Above all, we must protect patient safety. We must act sensibly and legislate robustly, with proper scientific input to ensure that changes are to the benefit and not the detriment of patients. Patients must be kept at the heart of the changes and we must retain their trust, which, as other hon. Members have said, is hard to gain but easily lost.

If patients are to trust and fully embrace this revolutionary transformation of care, they need full explanations and to understand what is involved. People need to understand, for example, that artificial intelligence will not replace their GP with a robot, but will mean that a GP session may be recorded and transcribed by computer, which then produces a diagnosis. We need to pay special attention to the needs of the vulnerable, elderly and, in particular, the mentally ill. We must make it plain to patients that AI is not and never will be a replacement for human health professionals. It should always be clear that AI is not a means of providing health services on the cheap, but a way of enhancing diagnosis and treatments to assist, not replace, well-qualified health professionals.

There are obvious implications for data protection and the misuse of data. Although ideas such as allowing Amazon’s Alexa to use NHS 111 information to guide patients to the most effective non-emergency treatment are beneficial, the idea of inadvertently letting such companies have unfettered access to patient records, which they could use for other unconnected purposes, is clearly unacceptable.

We must ensure that patients know that our laws protect them from predatory companies. All data used in the NHS—even if through third-party contractors—must stay within the NHS. If we are to embrace this revolution, it must be patient-focused and not a market-centred approach. AI must improve life outcomes and not be used to sell diet pills in the name of healthcare. Patients and medical professionals must be properly educated in what AI will mean for them, and both should be involved as much as possible in the design process.

Artificial intelligence can bring many benefits, but its use in healthcare brings significant challenges. We have nothing to fear from embracing it, as long as all provision is properly regulated in a way that protects patients without stifling continued innovation—there is a fine balance. The key is to ensure that health professionals are involved in every stage of development and, most importantly of all, that the NHS ensures that patients are fully informed and engaged.

The APPG concluded:

“Meaningful, early and proactive engagement on how AI is used in healthcare is essential for effective implementation and sustainability.”

That is well put and I agree. Unless patients are fully engaged, AI will just not progress in the way that it could and opportunities will be lost. I hope that the Minister will outline the Government’s plans for implementing the report’s recommendations. Will she reassure us that the NHS will lead on this with all its resources, ensuring that patients are at the heart of this exciting new technology, and that all patients, irrespective of their socioeconomic background or personal ability to access technology, will be able to benefit?