Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he is taking steps to support the development of artificial intelligence in brain imaging.

The Department is funding the AI in Health and Care Award which has provided £123 million to 86 artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. The Award was created to accelerate the testing and evaluation of some of the most promising AI technologies that can support clinicians.

One of the areas supported by the AI Award is brain imaging. We are currently evaluating the Brainomix e-Stroke Suite, a CE-marked set of tools that uses artificial intelligence methods to interpret acute stroke brain scans, and helps doctors make the right choices about treatment and the need for specialist transfer of patients. E-stroke suite is currently deployed in nine stroke networks in the United Kingdom. We are also funding the first real world testing of Qure.ai’s qER, a triage and notification AI tool that prioritises head CT scans with critical abnormalities such as a bleed, fracture, mass effect or midline shift for priority review by a radiologist and Icometrix’s icobrain which uses AI on MRI scans to track the progress of multiple sclerosis.