AI: The future of healthcare?

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare has been hailed as a valuable tool to help doctors save time when it comes to diagnosing illnesses or reading scans, but its potential goes way beyond that.

With the NHS facing record backlogs and huge staffing pressures, health leaders are looking to innovation for help.

According to the NHS, AI has the potential to “make a significant difference in health and care settings” as it can analyse vast amounts of complex information quickly.

It is currently being utilised to read x-rays – such as mammograms – helping doctors in decision making and giving them more time to spend with patients, as well as helping medics to diagnose strokes faster.

NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard has promised that further uses of AI are “on the horizon”, while Health Secretary Steve Barclay is fully behind the adoption of technology in the health service, saying it “must embrace innovation to keep fit for the future”.

The Government has pumped almost £150 million into AI technologies, while last month the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) recommended the use of nine platforms to aid doctors for the first time.

These programs, used by radiology departments, allow clinicians outline patients’ healthy organs ahead of radiotherapy to ensure cells are not damaged. At the moment, the outline, known as contours, are done by hand.

An investigation by Nice found the AI platforms “generally produce similar quality contours” as those carried out manually, with most only needing “minor edits”.

Scientists are now paving the way for AI to be used in other departments, with emerging programs able to predict the damage an illness or long-term condition could cause in a patient’s body ahead of time.

Earlier this summer the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) released a collection of ten studies on AI to demonstrate where it could come in useful in the future.

The pieces of research were published between 2020 and 2023, and explored how AI could be used to detect heart disease via “smart stethoscopes”, or predict the progression of diseases such as bowel condition ulcerative colitis.

AI as a tool for prediction has masses of potential given the current pressures on the NHS and the fact the population is getting older.

Researchers are currently looking at how the technology could be utilised to carry out faster and more accurate tests for people at risk of the likes of Parkinson’s disease or diabetes.

It is hoped they could eventually be developed into standard screening tools for the population and work towards preventing and treating the conditions.

A team spanning the University of Liverpool and Manchester Metropolitan University were recently awarded £1.4 million to tweak equipment found in high street optometrists to detect nerve damage at the front of the eye and predict if further damage will occur.

This nerve damage can be a sign of diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN), which can lead to patients having limbs amputated.

Scientists are also exploring the use of AI-powered eye scans to diagnose Parkinson’s disease before a patient presents symptoms.

A study led by Moorfields Eye Hospital and the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology looked at vast datasets and used machine learning to pick up retinal markets.

They found people with Parkinson’s had a thinner ganglion cell-inner plexiform layer (GCIPL) and inner nuclear layer (INL) in the eye and suggested looking at these layers in people at risk of developing the condition could lead to early diagnosis.

One major obstacle to the wider roll-out of AI – and wider innovation and digitisation in the NHS generally – is funding.

A Health and Social Care Committee report in June highlighted that some NHS trusts lack “the most basic, functioning IT equipment” and more support is needed to address challenges.

However, in June, the Government announced £21 million for AI, adding to the £123 million already being used to support the development of 86 technologies.

Speaking at the time, Steve Barclay said he is “focused on adopting the latest cutting-edge technology” in the NHS “to ensure we can continue to deliver the best care for our patients and cut waiting times”.

Debate is also ongoing regarding the regulation of AI on a wider scale, especially with the rise of models such as ChatGPT.

However, earlier this month Darren Stephens, who is commercial vice president and UK and EU head of commercial at technology company Qure, said the concept of AI “learning as it goes along doesn’t exist” in the health space.

“The version that is released to a hospital after it’s been tested doesn’t change beyond that release,” he told the PA news agency. “It’s very much done in a safe and controlled way.”

Mr Stephens also called for more to be done to educate the public on the benefits of AI.

“There’s a lot of myths associated with the technology and how it’s deployed because there’s a lot of fear out there around Chat GPT-like applications and language models.”

Politicians are now focusing on processes, with the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee publishing its interim report on the governance of AI at the end of August.

It identified 12 challenges that the committee said must be addressed by policymakers to secure public confidence in the technology.

The challenges included the potential for AI to perpetuate unaccapetable societal biases and issues around accessing data.

An AI & Digital Regulation Service was also recently launched to help NHS staff find information and guidance when it comes to deploying AI devices safely.

Dr Uazman Alam from the Institute of Life Course and Medical Sciences at the University of Liverpool told the PA news agency he thinks AI will “be an important facet of all healthcare systems at some point” but “will need developing further” before it is adopted widely.

“I think we have to remember that AI is not just the images that we’re talking about, but it can also be data as well,” he added. “It’s here to stay. We need to develop it in a way that is ethical.”

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