06.11.18
Five new AI medical centres to open next year in £50m Industrial Strategy investment
Five new medical technology centres utilising medical advances in Artificial Intelligence will be built, using £50m of government funding to improve early diagnosis of disease.
The clinics will be built in Leeds, Oxford, Coventry, Glasgow and London as part of the government’s drive to use AI to improve healthcare and treatments, and will be up and running in 2019.
The new centres will use the latest advances in digital technology to speed up diagnoses of disease and develop more intelligent analysis of medical imaging.
The government says this will lead to better clinical decisions for patients, in turn freeing up more staff time for direct patient care across the NHS.
Business secretary Greg Clark said: “AI has the potential to revolutionise healthcare and improve lives for the better.
“That’s why our modern Industrial Strategy puts pioneering technologies at the heart of our plans to build a Britain fit for the future.
“The innovation at these new centres will help diagnose disease earlier to give people more options when it comes to their treatment, and make reporting more efficient, freeing up time for our much-admired NHS staff time to spend on direct patient care.”
The centres, each receiving £10m, will be based at universities and NHS facilities, and will be funded through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, the government’s investment programme focusing on “the opportunities and challenges of the future.”
Matt Hancock commented: “Artificial Intelligence will play a crucial role in the future of the NHS – and we need to embrace it by introducing systems which can speed up diagnoses, improve patient outcomes, make every pound go further and give clinicians more time with their patients.”
He said it was part of the long-term plan to transform the NHS into “an ecosystem of enterprise and innovation that allows technology to flourish and evolve.”
Sir Mark Walport, the chief executive of UK Research and Innovation, praised the focus on early diagnosis of illness which can “greatly increase the chances of successful treatment and save lives.”
He said: “The centres announced today bring together the teams that will develop Artificial Intelligence tools that can analyse medical images varying from x-rays to microscopic sections from tissue biopsies. Artificial Intelligence has the potential to revolutionise the speed and accuracy of medical diagnosis.”
Image credit - sturti
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