NHSX' NHS AI Lab and the Health Foundation have today awarded £1.4m to four projects to address racial and ethnic health inequalities using artificial intelligence (AI). The winning projects range from using AI to investigate disparities in maternal health outcomes to developing standards and guidance to ensure that datasets for training and testing AI systems are inclusive and generalisable. The NHS AI Lab introduced the AI Ethics Initiative to support research and practical interventions that complement existing efforts to validate, evaluate and regulate AI-driven technologies in health and care, with a focus on countering health inequalities. Today's announcement is the result of the Initiative's partnership with The Health Foundation on a research competition, enabled by NIHR, to understand and enable opportunities to use AI to address inequalities and to optimise datasets and improve AI development, testing and deployment. 'As we strive to ensure NHS patients are amongst the first in the world to benefit from leading AI, we also have a responsibility to ensure those technologies don't exacerbate existing health inequalities.

Four projects have received a share of £1.4million to use artificial intelligence to address racial and ethical health inequalities. The funding, a joint programme with the NHSX AI Lab and the Health Foundation, aims to ensure healthcare solutions don't "exacerbate existing health inequalities". The four projects range from using artificial intelligence (AI) to investigate disparities in maternal health outcomes, to developing standards and guidance to ensure that datasets for training and testing AI systems are inclusive and generalisable. Dr Indra Joshi, director of the AI Lab at NHSX, said: "As we strive to ensure NHS patients are amongst the first in the world to benefit from leading AI, we also have a responsibility to ensure those technologies don't exacerbate existing health inequalities. "These projects will ensure the NHS can deploy safe and ethical artificial intelligence tools that meet the needs of minority communities and help our workforce deliver patient-centred and inclusive care to all." Speaking exclusively to The Guardian today (October 20) health secretary Sajid Javid said he was committed to "removing barriers" in the NHS. "As the first health and social care secretary from an ethnic minority background, I care deeply about tackling the disparities which exist within the healthcare system.

The £1.4m funding is financed by the NHS' AI Lab – called NHSX – and The Health Foundation, with the projects aiming to utilise AI to address racial and ethnic health inequalities in the UK. The selected initiatives will implement the technology in a broad range of investigations, from assessing disparities in maternal health outcomes to designing standards and guidance to ensure AI systems are inclusive and generalisable. The NHS AI lab introduced the AI Ethics Initiative in March 2021 to assist research and practical interventions that enhance existing efforts to validate, evaluate, and regulate AI-based technologies in the healthcare sector to mitigate health inequalities. This considerable funding results from their partnership with The Health Foundation on a research competition, which the NIHR enabled. The endeavour saw the organisations collaborate to explore and create opportunities to employ AI to address health inequalities and optimise datasets to improve AI's development, testing, and deployment.

In August 2019 the UK government announced a welcome boost for artificial intelligence (AI) in health care, with £250m for a national laboratory in England. Public imagination is captivated by robots, but the new lab will prioritise technologies more likely to benefit the health system and patients in the short term, including algorithms to predict demand for hospital beds and tools that identify signs of disease from diagnostic images, all underpinned by a focus on ethical and fair AI. Many health care professionals rely on paper records and outdated technology, and struggle to access basic information at the point of care. Investment is needed, but this must be matched with a credible national strategy for AI and data analytics that focuses on the needs of patients and the health system rather than technology for technology's sake. The priorities of NHSX, the national agency for digital transformation in health care that will host the AI lab, include reducing clinicians' workloads, giving patients tools to access services directly, ensuring clinical information can be accessed safely where needed, enhancing patient safety, and improving productivity.