UK Government To Pledge Millions To Develop AI That Can Diagnose Brain Cancer

Sometimes with medical diagnosis, it can come too late where upon detection, it might already be too late for the patient to be cured. However in recent times we’ve started to see how AI can be used to help improve on diagnosis, where some researchers have developed AI that can detect things like bowel cancer in minutes.

Now over in the UK, it seems that AI for use in the medical industry is getting a boost by the government, where Prime Minister Theresa May will pledge millions of pounds of government funding to help develop AI that is capable of diagnosing brain cancer and other chronic diseases at an early stage, hoping that by detecting them early, it will result in avoidable deaths.

In a speech made by the Prime Minister, she was quoted as saying, “Late diagnosis of otherwise treatable illnesses is one of the biggest causes of avoidable deaths. The development of smart technologies to analyse great quantities of data quickly and with a higher degree of accuracy than is possible by human beings, opens up a whole new field of medical research and gives us a new weapon in our armoury in the fight against disease.”

It is thought that with the use of AI, it could in theory prevent 22,000 deaths from cancer each year by 2033. However it seems that there are some concerns raised by this funding, as it would allow commercial firms to access NHS data for profit, leading some to question the ethics surrounding data sharing, privacy, and so on.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Computers, General, Medical
Tags: AI (Artificial Intelligence), Health, Science