New partnership to develop AI platforms for faster diagnosis and treatment

Artificial Intelligence (AI) platforms which can provide faster diagnosis and treatments for clinicians are to be developed as part of a new partnership.

The London Medical Imaging and AI Centre for Value-Based Healthcare and digital transformation consultancy Answer have teamed up to help pave the way for AI-enabled hospitals.

The platforms will be developed to support clinicians with faster diagnosis and treatments, personalised therapies, and effective screening across a range of conditions and procedures.

Federated learning – a model seeking to address the problem of data governance and privacy by training algorithms collaboratively without exchanging the data itself – will also be used to help address long standing privacy issues.

Beverley Bryant, chief digital information officer for Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, and senior responsible owner for the London Medical Imaging and AI Centre for Value-Based Healthcare, said: “This is a unique programme to implement AI at scale within the NHS.

“Our partnership with Answer is another key step toward deploying this open-source technology in clinical environments. Answer is a respected digital health agency, and we hope that our partnership and shared success will provide a springboard for widespread AI deployment across the NHS to benefit patients.”

The new project will provide the NHS with a fully open-source solution that comprises a federated learning interoperability platform capable of ensuring machine learning models can be trained without data leaving the trust’s secure environment, and an AI deployment engine which will enable AI to be deployed safely within the trusts.

The London Medical Imaging and AI Centre for Value-Based Healthcare was recently awarded a £16 million Department of Health and Social Care grant by the Office for Life Sciences to enable its programme of artificial intelligence research within the NHS, with the aim of providing more innovative and accessible healthcare solutions to the public.

Answer is a digital health agency that researches, designs, and develops digital solutions across the country across a number of sectors.

Richard Pugmire, director at Answer, added: “We are thrilled to be part of the journey that brings AI to the forefront of patient care in a new and meaningful way.

“The AI programme is hugely ambitious, and the partnership allows us to bring the best technical, clinical and academic minds together to showcase a truly robust solution, capable of changing the way healthcare is provided for many years to come.”