UK government pledges £250m artificial intelligence lab for health services

The new lab aims to develop new technologies in healthcare but concerns remain over data handling

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson, second from left, and Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock, left, speak with staff members during a visit to an NHS hospital on Monday. AFP

Britain's National Health Service is to receive £250 million (Dh1.1 billion) to set up a National Artificial Intelligence Lab to develop high-tech treatments for cancer, dementia and heart disease, the UK government has announced.

Health and social care minister Matt Hancock announced the creation of the fund, which aims to turn the health service (NHS) into a world leader in the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare.

It is the latest in a series of announcements intended to underline the British government’s commitment to the NHS under prime minister Boris Johnson.

On Tuesday, Mr Johnson announced £1.8bn in NHS spending, including an £850m hospital upgrade programme to improve care in 20 hospitals across the UK.

Critics of the policy said the money is not enough to fix the damage caused by years of budget cuts.

Mr Hancock, a technology enthusiast who has developed his own app, said he was “determined to bring the benefits of technology to patients and staff”.

"We are on the cusp of a huge health tech revolution,” he said.

“The experts tell us that because of our NHS and our tech talent, the UK could be the world leader in in these advances in healthcare so I’m determined to give the NHS the chance to be the world leader in saving lives through artificial intelligence and genomics,” he added.

The new lab will be part of NHSX, the branch of the health service responsible for implementing new technology, and promises to enable medical practitioners to identify patients in need of better treatment and automate routine administrative tasks.

The government claims artificial intelligence (AI) will enable NHS staff to accurately estimate the need for crucial resources including beds, medicines and equipment.

The size and scope of the NHS presents a unique opportunity for the use of artificial intelligence to impact on healthcare.

The 71-year-old service has the lifelong medical histories of over 55 million people in its records.

The data gathered by the health service throughout the history of its operations was valued at £9.6bn by business consulting firm EY in a report in June.

The significance of such a large series of data sets in the use of AI is that algorithms work best when they are trained to recognise patterns in huge quantities of data.

In May, researchers at Northwestern University in Illinois published a study suggesting that AI outperformed human specialists at diagnosing lung cancer.

The researchers worked with Google to train the computer software with over 42,000 images of lung scans.

Because of its access to data, the NHS could therefore provide fertile ground for innovation in artificial intelligence and the use of big data in healthcare.

AI is already being used in some NHS facilities to predict which patients might miss appointments so that reminders can be sent out.

In some hospitals AI is also successfully predicting cancer survival rates.

Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, said: “Carefully targeted AI is now ready for practical application in health services, and the investment announced today is another step in the right direction to help the NHS become a world leader in using these important technologies.”

The UK government is also promoting genomics, a field of biology which focuses on mapping DNA, as another crucial area for technological development.

But the increased use of new technologies like AI brings challenges.

In 2017, the NHS was criticised for sharing the data of 1.6m patients, in a deal to develop an app to identify patients at risk of kidney disease, with Google’s DeepMind, an artificial intelligence company.

The Information Commission later ruled that the NHS had not done enough to protect patient data.