Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to introduce the use of AI to detect skin cancer.

Artificial intelligence (AI) offers a wide range of opportunities to help change our health and care system for the better. One opportunity for AI in the National Health Service is to support with diagnostics, including detecting skin cancer.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) routinely evaluates medical technologies, including innovative AI-enabled technologies, and makes recommendations on the clinical and cost-effectiveness of products for the health and social care services in England. NICE has recommended the use of an AI technology for assessing and triaging skin lesions for patients in the NHS suspected skin cancer pathway.

This AI tool, DERM, can distinguish between benign and cancerous skin lesions with nearly 99.7% accuracy, and is now being used in 25 NHS trusts as a part of the NHS's rollout of ‘teledermatology’. Further evidence on the clinical and cost-effectiveness of the tool is currently being collected.