Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to deploy artificial intelligence diagnostic tools to aid healthcare professionals.

Against a backdrop of increasing demand for National Health Services and significant workforce pressures, artificial intelligence (AI) presents significant opportunities for improving the delivery of care and outcomes for patients. AI tools have the potential to make healthcare more timely, effective, and accessible to the public. To make the most of these opportunities, the Prime Minister has accepted all 50 recommendations of Matt Clifford's AI Opportunities Action Plan.

Through our 10-Year Health Plan for England, we have set out how we will harness the advantages of AI, including in diagnostics to propel the NHS into a position of global leadership.

Through the AI in Health and Care Award, £113 million, allocated in multiple spending rounds from 2020 to 2023, has been provided to test and evaluate AI technologies in crucial areas, such as imaging and diagnostics. This funding is helping us to generate the evidence needed to deploy effective AI tools across the NHS and improve the lives and health outcomes of our population.

In addition to the Health and Care Award funding, the Government also has a £21 million AI Diagnostic Fund, focussed on the deployment of technologies in key, high-demand areas such as chest X-rays and chest computed tomography scans, to enable faster diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer in 12 imaging networks, which covers 67 out of a total of 137 acute and specialist trusts across all seven regions of England.

NHS England is working to ensure magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) acceleration software is being rolled out across MRI scanners, which includes upgrading old scanners which are unable to utilise this new software and technology. This software can deliver a 30% reduction in some scan times, increasing throughput, environmental efficiency, and service resilience simultaneously.