Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of AI integration in health on productivity in (a) radiology and (b) oncology.

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have huge potential in improving productivity across the National Health Service by supporting clinicians with faster and more accurate diagnosis, enhancing clinical decision-making about treatment plans, and reducing the administrative burden faced by healthcare staff. The Department and NHS England are developing guidance for the responsible use of these tools and how they can be rolled out to make the day-to-day operations of the NHS more productive.

To further support staff productivity in radiology and oncology, the Department is focusing the £21 million AI Diagnostic Fund on the integration of AI technologies in key, high-demand areas such as radiology, particularly for chest X-Rays and chest computed tomography scans, to enable faster diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer in over half of acute trusts in England.

The Department is also working closely with regulators to assess the impact of AI integration on healthcare staff productivity and identify new measures for providing assurance, with the launch of AI Airlock. A Medicines and Healthcare products Regulation Agency-led initiative, supported by the Department, designed to create a controlled testing environment where developers can rigorously validate AI tools in real-world clinical settings before full-scale deployment, ensuring they meet NHS standards for safety, efficacy, value for money, and integration into existing healthcare workflows, including productivity. This initiative provides valuable feedback for developers to refine their products to ensure assessments are carried out on the impact to staff before eventually being deployed into the NHS.

In addition, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), sponsored by the Department, evaluates new health technologies for NHS use, considering clinical effectiveness, value for money, and impacts on staff. As part of this, the NICE conducts Early Value Assessments (EVA) for developers, reviewing their AI tools before they are deployed. For the NHS, EVAs aim to give the NHS a clear signal about which innovations work, offer good value for money, and meet system need, including productivity gains for staff.

The NHS also partnered with the Royal College of Radiologists to deliver the first Global AI Conference on 3 and 4 February 2025. AI projects across radiology, oncology, and other clinical specialties were discussed at the conference, including how AI could support radiologists and oncologists to be more productive and offer a high standard of treatment to the public.

The 10-Year Health Plan is committed to reviewing how the NHS should focus its resources to ensure it maximises the impact of data and technology, including how we can make life easier and more productive for those who work in the NHS. AI will play an important role to achieve this long-term ambition by building and delivering AI capabilities, which will allow clinicians, such as radiologists and oncologists, to focus more on direct patient care and staff to spend more time on high value, high impact tasks.