Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to assess the clinical safety and cost effectiveness of AI mental health tools funded and used by the NHS.

The Government is committed to ensuring that artificial intelligence (AI) tools used in mental health care within the National Health Service are clinically safe and deliver value for money. We are working with regulators such as the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, and other partners to ensure all AI mental health tools deployed in the NHS meet the requirements of the United Kingdom’s regulatory system, to ensure these technologies are safe for use and cost-effective.

Additionally, NHS England applies the Digital Technology Assessment Criteria to evaluate the safety, security, and usability of digital health tools. Independent clinical evaluations and pilot studies are also undertaken prior to wider implementation of these technologies.

Through the AI in Health and Care Award, which ran from 2020 to 2024, the NHS AI Lab funded the testing and evaluation of two mental health technologies, Limbic Access and Wysa. As set out in the 10-Year Health Plan, the NHS is working towards rolling out digital mental health tools. As part of this process, each technology is assessed not only for clinical safety but also for cost-effectiveness, ensuring that these innovations deliver measurable benefits and represent good value for the NHS and taxpayers.