Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure artificial intelligence technologies used to aid healthcare diagnostics are available in every hospital.

The Department has provided £113 million, through the National Health Service’s Artificial Intelligence in Health and Care Awards, to 86 artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, which have been live in 40% of NHS acute trusts in England, and hundreds of Primary Care Networks across the United Kingdom. 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.

Many of these AI technologies are being tested and evaluated to aid healthcare diagnostics. For example, AI is being used to analyse and interpret acute stroke brain scans to support doctors making treatment decisions in 100% of stroke units in England. In addition, the Department is focusing the £21 million AI Diagnostic Fund on the deployment of technologies in key, high-demand areas such as chest x-rays and chest computed tomography scans, to enable the faster diagnosis of lung cancer in over half of acute trusts in England.

Despite these exciting examples of AI use, the deployment of AI in the NHS is still at a relatively early stage. To address this, the Department is carrying out work to assess the barriers of effective adoption and improve the way AI tools are deployed across the NHS.