The NHS is creating a multi-million pound 'AI lab' to investigate the use of technology in the health sector.

The £250m investment will be put towards bringing together the UK's top minds across the healthcare and technology industry, with the NHS promising research into a number of new fields and treatments.

Among the initial priorities for the new lab are personalised NHS screening and research into treatments for cancer, eye disease and a range of other conditions.

The new AI Lab will sit within NHSX, the government's new body tasked with overseeing the digitsation of the UK's health system.

"We are on the cusp of a huge health tech revolution that could transform patient experience by making the NHS a truly predictive, preventive and personalised health and care service," Health Secretary Matt Hancock said announcing the launch.

"It’s part of our mission to make the NHS the best it can be...The experts tell us that because of our NHS and our tech talent, the UK could be the world leader 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."

The announcement, from the UK Department of Health and Social Care, said that the new National Artificial Intelligence Lab will “bring together the industry’s best academics, specialists and technology companies to work on some of the biggest challenges in health and care, including earlier cancer detection, new dementia treatments and more personalised care.”

The idea that AI could help in healthcare is not new.

Back in 2017, British startup Babylon Health said it was looking to create the perfect doctor through the use of machine learning.

The AI Lab for the NHS comes after AI is already being developed in some hospitals, where it has apparently successfully predicted cancer survival rates and cut the number of missed appointments.

Well it is envisaged for example that the AI Lab’s work could improve cancer screening by speeding up the results of tests, including mammograms, brain scans, eye scans and heart monitoring.

It could also use predictive models to better estimate future needs of beds, drugs, devices or surgeries; identify which patients could be more easily treated in the community; identify patients most at risk of diseases such as heart disease or dementia; and it could be used to build systems to detect people at risk of post-operative complications, infections or requiring follow-up from clinicians.

The UK government has announced it’s rerouting £250M (~$300M) in public funds for the country’s National Health Service (NHS) to set up an artificial intelligence lab that will work to expand the use of AI technologies within the service.

The Lab, which will sit within a new NHS unit tasked with overseeing the digitisation of the health and care system (aka: NHSX), will act as an interface for academic and industry experts, including potentially startups, encouraging research and collaboration with NHS entities (and data) — to drive health-related AI innovation and the uptake of AI-driven healthcare within the NHS.

Last fall the then new in post health secretary, Matt Hancock, set out a tech-first vision of future healthcare provision — saying he wanted to transform NHS IT so it can accommodate “healthtech” to support “preventative, predictive and personalised care”.

In a press release announcing the AI lab, the Department of Health and Social Care suggested it would seek to tackle “some of the biggest challenges in health and care, including earlier cancer detection, new dementia treatments and more personalised care”.

Other suggested areas of focus include:

improving cancer screening by speeding up the results of tests, including mammograms, brain scans, eye scans and heart monitoring

The UK government today announced it would invest £250 million (roughly $300 million) into artificial intelligence technology, which would be used by the public healthcare system, known as the NHS, to improve the quality of care.

It’s worth adding that the NHS also successfully uses AI in several important areas, so this isn’t necessarily a first for this beloved healthcare service.

The Guardian notes that it’s used in cancer screening procedures, as well as in identifying patients who are likely to miss appointments, in order to send targeted reminders.

However, there are reasons to be concerned.

During the 2000’s, the Tony Blair-led Labour government embarked on an ambitious initiative to digitize procedures that were otherwise analog.

A vast proportion of work was done by large multinational IT companies, namely Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) and Fujitsu, both of whom did a substandard job while simultaneously milking the public purse for anything they could get.

The U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) today announced it’ll reroute £250 million ($302.86 million) in funds to create a new Artificial Intelligence Lab within a unit tasked with digitizing the country’s health care system, which it says will work to bring together academics, specialists, and tech companies to tackle “some of the biggest challenges in health and care.”

“We are on the cusp of a huge health tech revolution that could transform [the] patient experience by making the NHS a truly predictive, preventive and personalized health and care service,” wrote Health Secretary Matt Hancock.

“It’s part of our mission to make the NHS the best it can be.

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

The NHS expects the AI Lab’s work will enhance cancer screenings by expediting mammograms, brain scans, eye scans, and heart monitoring, and that it’ll enable clinicians to better estimate drug, device, and surgical needs on the fly.

Moreover, it says that the machine learning models it develops might help to identify which patients could be more easily treated in the community, and to identify those most at risk of post-operative complications or infections and diseases such as heart disease or dementia.