A pioneering ‘cloud-based’ AI research screening platform, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) will enable NHS trusts across the country to join Al trials aiming to help speed up diagnosis.
The system, dubbed AIR-SP, is being built by NHS England. It is backed by nearly £6 million in government funding. It will offer NHS staff access to revolutionary AI tools in trials to help analyse screening images and pinpoint abnormalities, including signs of cancer.
Currently, the NHS lacks the digital tools to deploy AI in screening quickly, safely and at scale. 90% of AI tools remain stuck in pilot phases due to over-reliance on temporary IT setups in each individual trust. Even if a tool is deemed effective by a single trust, every other NHS trust must start the process of testing the tool from scratch and set up new databases to access images generated by the AI.
The new system, which will take around two years to build, will hold multiple AI tools in a single place. It will have secure connections to all NHS trusts. This will dramatically cut down the time and costs associated with rolling out AI research studies.
In future, pioneering tools could be tested and trialled at the same time, in any trust across the NHS, with a view to rolling them out to the NHS frontline if they are found effective. This demonstrates the government’s plan to shift the health service from analogue to digital.
The building of the digital platform is being funded by NIHR. It is expected to be rolled out for research purposes in 2027.
It will first be used to support the NIHR-funded EDITH trial (Early Detection using Information Technology in Health). Nearly 700,000 women across the country will take part in the £11m world-leading study. The research team will harness AI to help identify changes in breast tissue that show possible signs of cancer and refer them for further investigations if required.
As it stands, costly IT solutions across multiple trusts - up to £3.5 million per study - are required for each research study involving several projects to ensure AI access to images. The new unified platform will simplify this process, reducing costs by millions of pounds per study, enabling multiple AI products to be tested in one secure environment. It is expected to save £2-3 million for every multi-site study.
Professor Lucy Chappell, Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NIHR CEO, said: “In order to unlock the potential of AI in healthcare, we need digital infrastructure that enables researchers to rigorously evaluate these tools in real-world NHS settings, at speed and scale. This unified AI research screening platform will help us to understand how AI can safely and effectively improve patient care, while speeding up the time it takes to set up AI research studies and reducing costs.”