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.