Council Post: England's Rare Diseases Action Plan Needs AI To Succeed

Dr. Tim Guilliams, co-founder and CEO of Healx, is an advocate for harnessing the power of AI to accelerate treatments for rare diseases. Rare diseases are largely overlooked by pharmaceutical companies and traditional drug discovery methods, despite the fact that 1 in 17 people in the UK will be affected by one at some point in their life. Sadly, most rare conditions don't have an approved therapy today, and, in the UK, that means that many of the millions of people dealing with a rare disease will not have access to the treatment--or receive the level of care--that they need. So any step taken by governments to improve outcomes for those with rare diseases is to be welcomed, which is why it was positive to see the Department of Health and Social Care publish its first England Rare Diseases Action Plan this spring, building on the wider UK Rare Diseases Framework published last year. It contains some good proposals on improving diagnosis and access to specialist care--which are both vital--but, arguably, something that will have one of the biggest impacts is unlocking new treatments and making them available to patients. Care is key, but so is an investment in finding cures.