Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to develop an AI policy for healthcare services to ensure the safe and responsible use of artificial intelligence when accessing patient records.

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have huge potential in improving efficiency 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 efficient.

There are strict safeguards in place throughout the NHS to protect data. All providers of services which handle patient data must protect that data in line with the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), and Data Protection Act 2018, and every health organisation is required to appoint a Caldicott Guardian to advise on the protection of people’s health and care data, and ensure it is used properly. This includes where AI is used in relation to patient records.

We are considering how regulators should approach issues of privacy such as accessibility only to authorised users and how to safeguard against bad actors.

The NHS AI Lab and Sciencewise (UK Research and Innovation) held a public dialogue on how the public feels decisions should be made about access to their personal health data for AI purposes. The AI Lab is now procuring further research to design approaches to data stewardship based on these insights.

To mitigate the likelihood and severity of any potential harm to individuals arising from use of data in AI, the Information Commissioners Office has developed detailed AI guidance which provides an overarching view of data protection, including Data Protection Impact Assessments and UK GDPR. They have also produced an AI toolkit to support organisations auditing compliance of their AI-based technologies.