Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what purposes the Care Quality Commission has used artificial intelligence in the last 12 months.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is at the heart of the Government’s plan to kickstart an era of economic growth, transform how we deliver public services, and boost living standards for working people across the country.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has used AI to support how they fulfil their role as the independent regulator of health and social care, focussing on supporting their operational colleagues with identifying risk in health and care services, making operational efficiency improvements, and making better use of unstructured data.

Over the last 12 months, the CQC’s AI usage has been in an initialisation phase. They have been developing governance approaches, AI platforms and tooling, and making sure their staff have the right skills to use AI platforms, tools, and processes.

Their current priority AI projects include developing an adult social care risk model, which takes multiple complex data sources and gives a predictive score of risk, as well as the key drivers of that risk for a given provider. They have also explored how generative AI capabilities can support the CQC’s work, both in the form of bespoke chatbot solutions to increase operational efficiencies, and in a small-scale Microsoft 365 Copilot trial.

The CQC has not yet submitted any Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard records. They are however, in the process of adopting that standard and are trialling it with their risk model for residential adult social care services.