Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to attract and retain workers with skills in artificial intelligence into the NHS workforce.

We provide targeted upskilling and training for clinical staff through the Fellows in Clinical AI programme, and are developing specialised roles within our Digital, Data, and Technology workforce. Furthermore, the AI and Digital Healthcare Technologies Capability framework outlines the necessary capabilities for artificial intelligence (AI) across the National Health Service workforce.

We have also set out core foundations to drive AI-related education training in two published reports that focus on understanding and developing the healthcare workforce’s confidence in AI. These include developing fundamentals for the full workforce and advanced training, where it is required. The reports on understanding and developing confidence in AI are available, respectively, at the following links:

https://digital-transformation.hee.nhs.uk/binaries/content/assets/digital-transformation/dart-ed/understandingconfidenceinai-may22.pdf

https://digital-transformation.hee.nhs.uk/binaries/content/assets/digital-transformation/dart-ed/developingconfidenceinai-oct2022.pdf