No strategy for AI being adopted in the NHS, says Health Foundation

The Health Foundation has highlighted a lack of concrete strategy for adopting AI within the NHS in a report scrutinising manifestos from the main political parties.

In the report ‘Priorities for an AI in health care strategy’, published on 26 June 2024, the Health Foundation calls for the government and NHS leaders to develop a dedicated strategy for AI in healthcare.

“Despite a range of important work on AI underway within the NHS, government and a wide array of other organisations, current efforts to harness AI in health care risk being hampered by the lack of an overarching strategy and lack of coordination among the various actors,” the report says.

It adds that the existing ethics frameworks and guidance are “insufficient” to ensure that AI works for the greater social good and a strategy must be developed “under the guiding principle of responsibility”.

A strategy is particularly needed “to ensure the benefits of AI can be realised at scale across the NHS rather than just in a few pockets of excellence,” the report continues.

The Health Foundation sets out six key priorities it believes policymakers and health care leaders need to address through an AI strategy: meaningful public and staff engagement; effective priority setting; data and digital infrastructure that’s fit for purpose; high-quality testing and evaluation; clear and consistent regulation; and the right workforce skills and capabilities.

It notes there are key challenges to overcome, including “building public and staff consensus around AI in health care, making the NHS’s data and digital infrastructure fit for purpose, supporting the demonstration, testing and spread of AI tools, creating clear and consistent regulation, and ensuring the right workforce skills and capabilities”.

To address these challenges, the Health Foundation recommends focusing the “scarce attention and resources in a way that makes a difference on specific challenges the NHS needs to address – such as improving high-volume pathways (which treat a high number of patients with comparatively less complex conditions) or freeing up time to care for staff”.

In a blog post from 29 June, the Health Foundation highlights the Conservatives’ promise to use AI to free up doctors’ and nurses’ time.

It also praises Labour’s plans to create a new regulatory innovation office and to introduce binding regulation on those companies developing the most powerful AI models.

The Health Foundation spotlights some AI projects already implemented in the NHS – including MHRA’s Software and AI as a Medical Device Change and the NHS AI Lab’s AI and Digital Regulations Service, but says “these isolated initiatives currently do not exceed the sum of their parts because of the lack of an overarching strategy for AI in health care”.

In May this year, Digital Health News learned that the government’s planned investment in the NHS AI Lab, has been slashed from a promised £250 million to £139 million.