Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what purposes NHS England has used AI in the last 12 months.

Artificial intelligence (AI) presents significant opportunities within NHS England to improve delivery of care and outcomes for patients by increasing the speed and accuracy of diagnosis, alongside improving staff productivity, by freeing up staff time from some routine and administrative work.

Many of these AI technologies are being tested and evaluated in NHS England to aid clinical decision-making, healthcare diagnostics, and imaging. For example, AI has been used to analyse and interpret acute stroke brain scans to support doctors in making treatment decisions in 100% of stroke units in England. In addition, many new technologies have been deployed in over half of acute trusts in England in high-demand areas, such as chest x-rays and chest computed tomography scans, to enable faster diagnosis of diseases like cancer.

AI can support clinicians and National Health Service managers in running clinical operations through note taking during mental health consultations, appointment scheduling, and bed management. For example, automated voice to text tools, which use AI to listen to and transcribe patient notes, could help ease the administrative burden faced by staff and make systems more efficient. Several trusts in NHS England are currently running trials, including a multi-site assessment of the impact of using automated transcription software.

The deployment of AI in the NHS is still at a relatively early stage, with many AI tools being used in a research capacity. To address this, the Department is carrying out work, with NHS England, to assess the barriers of safe, ethical, and effective adoption and improve the way AI tools are deployed and used in NHS England.