Foreword

This report has been developed by Health Education England and the NHS Artificial Intelligence (AI) Lab at the NHS Transformation Directorate.

Foreword

In 2019, in our letter to the United Kingdom Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on behalf of the NHS’s team review for 'Preparing the healthcare workforce to deliver the digital future' (Topol Review), we projected how ‘empowerment of individuals who will increasingly be generating their own health data with the help of algorithms to interpret that data; and a marked improvement in the speed, accuracy and scalability of medical data interpretation offered by artificial intelligence (AI)’ would provide ‘robust support for all types of clinicians’ and ‘will lead to an evolution of the patient doctor relationship’. The report made the important recommendation that ‘education resources should be developed to educate and train all healthcare professionals in health data provenance, curation, integration and governance; ethics of AI and autonomous systems and tools; critical appraisal and interpretation of AI and robotics technologies’. 

In response to this recommendation, I am pleased to see that Health Education England (HEE) have established the DART-Ed (Digital, AI and Robotics Technologies in Education) Programme, to address the challenges of developing, growing, and retaining a digitally literate workforce. This collaborative research from HEE and the NHS AI Lab represents a significant step forward in developing confidence in AI in the healthcare workforce. It has built on the recommendations to address the significant skill gaps in clinical informatics and data driven technologies, acknowledging the importance of professionalisation and accreditation of individuals working in these areas, and the need to develop flexible training pathways that allow joint clinical and technical training, as well as developing partnerships with industry and educational organisations.

In a previous report, factors which contribute to confidence in AI were outlined in an impressive framework, and this second report adds to the framework by describing the NHS workforce in terms of AI archetypes (Shapers, Drivers, Creators, Embedders, and Users) and providing recommendations on the knowledge and skill areas across these archetypes which can be vital to equipping the workforce to implement and use AI safely, effectively, and ethically.

I would like to commend the organisations involved for investing in this world leading research collaborative and thank everyone who has helped to build on the recommendations outlined in our review by contributing to this research output. Indeed, it is a model for other countries to adopt as we move forward with implementing AI in medical practice. I look forward to following the next steps to this work in the forthcoming project, ‘Establishing healthcare workers’ confidence in AI’.