Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether officials in his Department (a) have had and (b) plan to have discussions with their counterparts in the Department for Health and Social Care on the potential impact of the use of AI on efficiency in the NHS.

The DSIT Secretary of State is committed to enabling the public sector to better adopt AI safely. DSIT is working closely with Departments, including DHSC, to support this in their areas of responsibility. For example, through the £21m AI Diagnostics fund, DHSC is supporting the deployment of technologies in key, high-demand areas such as chest X-Ray and chest CT scans to enable faster diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer in over half of acute trusts in England. The Secretary of State has also asked Matt Clifford to draft an AI Action Plan to grow the AI sector and ensure AI can be deployed across the economy to improve people’s lives.