The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) has signed Faculty Science as prime contractor for the development of the NHS Artificial Intelligence Deployment Platform (NHS AIDP).
They have agreed on agreed on a £2 million contract to run for two years, the award notice for which has just been published despite its having come into effect in September 2023.
The NHS AIDP is being developed to accelerate the safe deployment of mature and certified AI products for medical imaging in the health service. As a cloud based platform it will provide a standardised infrastructure their deployemt.
“To test this approach, several mature AI products from leading vendors will be deployed into two imaging networks, initially in shadow mode, before being potentially switched on live,” the notice says.
An earlier description from the NHS Transformation Directorate – now within NHS England – said the two networks are the East Midlands Imaging Network and Thames Valley Radiology Network.
Uneven distribution
It made the point that there are around 200 AI imaging technologies already on the market, most of which are tested and evaluated through the AI in Health and Care Award, but they are not distributed evenly throughout the NHS and trusts can find it hard to know which are safe to use.
The NHS AIDP is aimed at making it easier to continually monitor the performance of the technologies.
Faculty Science has previously been involved in the ethical application of AI in healthcare, in areas such as understanding biosecurity risks and modelling patient flows.
