Government announces £36 million for AI diagnostics in the NHS

The funding will go to 38 AI research projects chosen in the second round of NHS AI Lab's award programme

The government has announced £36 million funding for artificial intelligence (AI) projects, with the aim of helping to revolutionise diagnostics and care in the NHS.

The funding will go to 38 new AI research projects that have been selected as the winners of the second round of £140 million funding under the NHS AI Lab's AI in Health and Care Award programme.

Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock announced the winners at CogX Festival on Tuesday.

NHS AI Lab's AI awards are managed by the Accelerated Access Collaborative (AAC) and delivered in partnership with NHSX and National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).

The programme was launched by Hancock in January 2020 with the stated aim to support innovative solutions to speed up AI testing in the NHS for greater efficiency in diagnosis and screening services.

"Too many good ideas in the NHS never make it past the pilot stage," Hancock said last year in a speech at the Parliament & Healthtech conference in London.

"NHS Improvement estimate that it takes 17 years on average for a new product or device to go from successful clinical trial to mainstream adoption. Seventeen years. That is far too long."

"We need a culture that rewards and incentivises adoption as well as invention."

In the first round of the AI Award in September 2020, £50 million was given to 42 AI technologies with a focus on diagnosing stroke and diabetes, including those from Healthy.io, Brainomix and Kheiron Medical Technologies.

The AI programme aims to distribute £140 million over four years, with the next round of applications set to open later this month.

The 38 projects that have been chosen to receive government funding in the second round include an algorithm from BeholdAI to fast-track the detection of lung cancer; a cancer detection tool from Paige Prostate to help doctors spot cancers in digital images; the Wysa AI based chatbot app to help identify anxiety and depression in patients; Zebra Medica's Bone Health Solutions tool to identify spinal fractures in CT scans; and an AI-guided tool to help doctors diagnose heart attacks more accurately.

The winning entries were chosen from 336 applications following a process of diligence checks, peer reviews and interviews.

In a statement Sir Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, said: "Through our NHS AI Lab we're now backing a new generation of ground-breaking but practical solutions to some of the biggest challenges in healthcare. Precision cancer diagnosis, accurate surgery, and new ways of offering mental health support are just a few of the promising real world patient benefits."

Commenting on the government funding for AI projects, Flann Horgan, VP Healthcare at NTT DATA UK, said, "This funding announcement represents a key vote of confidence from the government in UK technology. The list of projects and new technologies is testament to the richness of AI research in 2020, a field which has helped the UK establish itself as a global centre for cutting-edge innovation."

He continued: "AI will have a critical role to play in continuing to modernise healthcare in the years to come, improving outcomes for patients and medical professionals, and it is great to see the government recognise this and provide funding to ensure the UK remains a leader in the healthcare technology space."