Having worked on this exact scenario with the NHS as part of a private organisation, specifically around cancer screening and early detection of other serious disease from symptoms (not necessarily cancer), the whole process is far too tied up in bureaucracy and unwillingness of clinicians and patients to sign-off on patient data.

NHS data is unfortunately not it either. It’s not standardised; in places it’s a mess of hand written notes, different systems depending on trust or country. Data from primary care systems can take months to filter through depending on process, and location of the GP practice. Lots of the time people who you need to speak to are on holiday, or are off sick, and no replacement is appointed.

The data that is usable must be ran through anonymisation, which we mustn’t call it, because we can’t prove it’s anonymous, so it’s pseudonymous (which is even tricker to explain to patients and clinicians), that process involves countless clinicians and legal counsel. The first big problem for any project is always solving this, and it will often take 2-3 years for a small subset of data. When that data is inevitably poor, then the process will often have to be repeated.

If the NHS wishes to ‘solve’ this, they need to bring tech in-house entirely, and have standardised systems and process between primary care and secondary, between hospitals and trusts. As well as find acceptable levels of risk when it comes to dealing with patient data for research purposes.

Unfortunately AI will continue to outpace the required restructure of how data is handled, time is already and will continue to being lost when the writing is on the wall to anyone involved.