Transformation Directorate

The Artificial Intelligence in Health and Care Award

The AI Award is funding and supporting promising AI technologies for health and social care.

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Health and Care Award aims to benefit patients by combining the power of artificial intelligence with the expertise of the NHS to improve health and care outcomes.

The Award has committed £123 million to accelerate the testing and evaluation of technologies most likely to meet the aims set out in the NHS Long Term Plan.

The AI in Health and Care Award is increasing the impact of AI systems in helping to solve both clinical and operational challenges across the NHS, including reducing waiting times, improving early diagnosis and saving staff time. It will speed up the most promising technologies through the regulatory process by building an evidence base to demonstrate the effectiveness and safety of artificial intelligence in health and care.

AI Award innovation case studies

The Award is one of the programmes of the NHS AI Lab and is run by the Accelerated Access Collaborative (AAC) in partnership with the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). Each round of the AI Award supports technologies at different levels of maturity, targeting health and care improvements where they are needed most, by both patients and NHS staff.

Since the first round winners were announced in September 2020, 86 AI technologies have been awarded a share of £123 million. We are now working with the winners to consider:

  • site selection: matching appropriate healthcare services to support the testing each product.
  • evaluation: ensuring appropriate evidence is collected to enable future roll-out of the AI innovation.

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