This is part 2 of our blog series on why we are concerned about the proposed use of AI in the 10 year plan for the health service recently released by the government . Part 1 can be found here
As the 10 year plan acknowledges, the NHS will have to “work in partnership with those creating exciting new technologies” to adopt AI.
In other words, it could represent a significant transfer of power and money from the public to the private sector.
In August, the NHS is tendering a contract worth up to £150m for AI tech that can analyse medical images.
That is just the tip of the iceberg, with the chancellor Rachel Reeves committing £10bn for the NHS to spend on tech over the next three financial years, an uplift of around 50% per year on 2025-26’s £2.1bn budget.
As the government itself acknowledges in its 10-year plan, the beneficiaries of tech investment have in the past been US firms who have provided systems that are more suited “to maximise the opportunity for private healthcare providers to bill private healthcare insurers”.
Who then might be in the running for winning AI contracts with the NHS?
US firms Google and Palantir, both of whom have worked with US private healthcare companies.
Last month, the government announced that Google will provide technology for free to modernise public services, including the NHS.
The deal followed 11 meetings between science and technology secretary Peter Kyle and representatives of the tech giant.
Google has previously lent its tech to NHS trusts on two occasions, one of which led to 1.6 million patient records being unlawfully shared.
Meanwhile, Palantir, a firm run by Trump-donor Peter Thiel, is rumoured to be the preferred choice for one the biggest tech projects in NHS history: the development of a single patient record.
The project, which would allow patients and clinicians to view their complete medical history in a unified record for the first time, is one of the key goals of the 10-year plan.
Thiel has made no secret of his disdain for the NHS, advising it would be better to “rip the whole thing from the ground and start over”, ideally with more “market mechanisms”.
Palantir is no less controversial having faced criticism for providing tech in the US for deportations, state surveillance, drone strikes in the Middle East, and, most recently, Israeli military operations.
On top of all that, it appears that Palantir’s technology isn’t very good, with some NHS trusts complaining that they already have more capable tools, as Democracy for Sale reported.
The last attempt at wide-reaching technology transformation of the NHS ended in disaster.
Launched in 2002, the £11.4bn National Programme for IT in the NHS, failed to deliver exactly what health secretary Wes Streeting is attempting now: an integrated, national patient record system.
Assessing the wreckage eight years later, MPs concluded the programme had relied too heavily on large tech firms whose fees ballooned and a one-size-fits-all design that failed to deliver. It remains to be seen whether the new system will heed those lessons.
None of this is to say that AI doesn’t have a role to play in improving care, though many argue that money needs to be spent getting the basics right first.
Or as one NHS staff member put it, “We’re in the situation where we’re talking about AI sometimes while people still have Nokia handsets.”
EveryDoctor wants to see:
- the evidence that AI will actually make a difference to the NHS before Streeting hands over billions to tech firms.
- the evidence that AI will transform the NHS for the better.
- the evidence that spending is not dictated by influence.