The UK government has announced the opening of five centres designed to capitalise on AI’s potential benefits in healthcare.
Patients will benefit from the use of AI to diagnose problems earlier, greatly increasing the chances of successful treatment.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said:
“Artificial intelligence will play a crucial role in the future of the NHS – and we need to embrace it by introducing systems which can speed up diagnoses, improve patient outcomes, make every pound go further, and give clinicians more time with their patients.
As part of our long-term plan, we will transform the NHS into an ecosystem of enterprise and innovation that allows technology to flourish and evolve.”
The new centres are based in Leeds, Glasgow, Oxford, Coventry, and London but will share their expertise with partners across the UK. Findings and breakthroughs will lead to better treatment decisions across the NHS.
Here is what each centre will focus on:
- London Medical Imaging and Artificial Intelligence Centre for Value-Based Healthcare will use artificial intelligence in medical imaging and related clinical data for faster and earlier diagnosis and automating expensive and time-consuming manual reporting
- Glasgow’s I-CAIRD (Industrial Centre for AI Research in Digital Diagnostics) will bring together clinicians, health planners, and industry to work with innovative SMEs to answer clinical questions, and solve healthcare challenges more quickly and efficiently
- NCIMI (National Consortium of Intelligent Medical Imaging) in Oxford will consider the role clinical imaging plays in the delivery of more personalised care and earlier diagnosis to support disease prevention and treatment
- The Northern Pathology Imaging Collaborative (NPIC) located in Leeds will boost the city’s reputation in digital pathology research further by creating a world-leading centre linking up 9 industry partners, 8 universities and 9 NHS trusts
- Based in Coventry, the Pathology image data Lake for Analytics, Knowledge and Education (PathLAKE) will use NHS pathology data to drive economic growth in health-related AI
AI is a major part of the UK government’s so-called Industrial Strategy. Over four years, £4.7 billion will be invested to address the opportunities and challenges of the future.
Business Secretary Greg Clark said:
“AI has the potential to revolutionise healthcare and improve lives for the better. That’s why our modern Industrial Strategy puts pioneering technologies at the heart of our plans to build a Britain fit for the future.
The innovation at these new centres will help diagnose disease earlier to give people more options when it comes to their treatment and make reporting more efficient, freeing up time for our much-admired NHS staff time to spend on direct patient care.”
The current plan is to have the new centres operational during 2019.
