The National Health System (NHS) announced it is developing a new AI early warning system aimed at automatically identifying safety issues before they impact patient safety.
The initiative is part of the Health and Social Care Secretary’s assurance to reform health and care regulation, eradicate poor performance and ensure patients receive safe, high-quality care.
The AI technology will scan NHS systems to bring safety issues to light in real time and trigger earlier inspections.
The government said patients will likely benefit from safer treatment due to faster identification of problems in care and greater quality assurance of data.
The safety warning system is part of the government’s 10 Year Health Plan to quickly analyze healthcare data and sound the alarm on growing safety issues.
The government announced that work on the system has begun, and a new maternity outcomes signal system is scheduled to launch across the NHS in November.
The system will utilize real-time data to flag higher-than-expected rates of stillbirth, neonatal death and brain injury.
When enacted, the system could analyze hospital databases to identify patterns of abuse, serious injuries, deaths or other incidents that can slip through the cracks, causing harm and preventing hospitals from running safely.
When problems emerge, the Care Quality Commission will then deploy specialist inspection teams to investigate and take action.
“While most treatments in the NHS are safe, even a single lapse that puts a patient at risk is one too many. Behind every safety breach is a person, a life altered, a family devastated, sometimes by heartbreaking loss,” Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care at the NHS, said in a statement.
“Patient safety and power are at the heart of our 10 Year Health Plan. By embracing AI and introducing world-first early warning systems, we’ll spot dangerous signs sooner and launch rapid inspections before harm occurs.”
The new system comes in the wake of the government’s commitment to a rapid national investigation into NHS maternity and neonatal services to provide truth and accountability for impacted families and drive improvements to care and safety.
“The NHS in England will be the first country in the world to trial an AI-enabled warning system to flag patient safety issues, which will rapidly analyze routine hospital data and reports submitted by healthcare staff from community settings,” Meghana Pandit, co-national medical director, secondary care, at the NHS, said in a statement.
“The move will turbo-charge the speed and efficiency with which we identify patient safety concerns and enable us to respond rapidly to improve patient care.”
THE LARGER TREND
In the U.S., the Department of Health and Human Services (DHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told a house appropriations committee that he wants to “do more with less” with the help of artificial intelligence.
“The AI revolution has arrived, and we are already using these new technologies to manage healthcare data more efficiently and securely,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy stated he is looking to “transform” the department into a “central hub for AI.”
In May, Thailand-based Bangkok Hospital announced an initiative also focused on patient safety. It unveiled an AI-powered smart mirror for screening vital signs.
The private hospital has recently partnered with Access Company to install a self-service kiosk that performs a 45-second contactless facial scan to assess vital signs.
These include heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, heart rate variability, atrial fibrillation, stress level and wellness indices.
In April, South Korea-based Asan Medical Center developed a voice-based clinical documentation system powered by a large language model.
The system automatically records and analyzes conversations, including identifying symptoms and classifying diseases, between and among staff and patients in near real time.
It also creates patients’ medical records on the spot, which are automatically saved to AMIS 3.0, AMC’s EMR system.
In 2024, Australian company Bestmed introduced a module on its medical management platform that notifies the families of aged care residents about changes to their medications dubbed Bestmed Connect.
The module, developed as part of a federal government-funded project, provides near real-time notifications on medications that are newly prescribed, adjusted or discontinued.
It also automates the confirmation of their families’ consent for prescribing psychotropic medications, a process that was previously done manually.
Bestmed expects the module to help avoid medication errors that cause permanent disability or death for nearly one in five hospitalized residents.
That same year, Dr. Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, an anesthesiology professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin and a past president of the American Medical Association, spoke to MobiHealthNews about how AI can uncover previously hidden but critical information in patient records for improved treatment.
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