Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment has the Department made of the potential merits of using the software platform Proximie during surgical procedures.

No assessment has been made. Proximie has been used by Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust and Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust to help surgeons give instructions about a procedure to surgical colleagues at another hospital, during an operation, by marking procedural annotations and instructions on the screen of their tablet, computer, mobile phone. It was also used to during the COVID-19 pandemic to help limit the number of people in an operating theatre without reducing the clinical expertise.

The National Health Service artificial intelligence (AI) lab was created in 2019 to enable the adoption of safe, effective and ethical AI technologies to improve the quality of care and productivity. The AI Lab has provided more than £100 million to 77 of the most promising AI technologies to accelerate the evaluation and deployment of AI in the NHS in collaboration with the health and care sector and industry and technology leaders.