Government to pump £50,000,000 into artificial intelligence for NHS

The NHS is set to receive millions of pounds for artificial intelligence upgrades as it works to clear a backlog of millions of cancer patients.

It comes after Health Secretary Matt Hancock admitted ‘some cancer treatment had to stop’ and couldn’t rule out having to cancel operations again if coronavirus cases surged.

The NHS is working to clear a backlog of potentially millions of patients after either operations were cancelled or people were deterred from going to hospital as the UK entered lockdown.

Cancer Research UK said as a result of the pandemic there were 2.4 million patients waiting for cancer screening, further treatment or treatment at the end of May.

But the Government said a £50 million funding boost to three digital pathology centres, based in London, Coventry and Leeds, would now lead to a ‘faster and more accurate’ diagnosis for millions of cancer patients.

The centres will deliver digital upgrades to pathology and imaging services across an additional 38 NHS trusts.

Mr Hancock said: ‘Technology is a force for good in our fight against the deadliest diseases – it can transform and save lives through faster diagnosis, free up clinicians to spend time with their patients and make every pound in the NHS go further.’

Professor Kiran Patel, chief medical officer for University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, added that the ‘major’ funding boost would allow them to ‘massively expand’ the digitisation of pathology services.

The Government also said it had transformed the Nightingale hospitals built to treat coronavirus patients into mass cancer screening centres.

Mr Hancock said it was ‘incredibly important’ for people to come forward and get tested for cancer.

Speaking to ITV News, he said the number of people facing delays in their cancer treatment had ‘halved’ since the start of the pandemic.

He said: ‘We’ve had to take action right across the NHS to make sure that we deal with Covid, and it was very important when there were a lot of new cases of Covid that people weren’t made more at risk because of treatments, especially for cancer.

‘But now it’s incredibly important for people to come forward.’

The health secretary refused to put a ‘precise date’ on when the backlog would be cleared because it ‘depended on how much Covid there is’.

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