UK to open 5 new AI centers for early diagnosis, medical imaging

Five technology centers dedicated to using AI to speed up disease diagnosis and improve patient outcomes are opening throughout the United Kingdom.  

The centers will be based in Leeds, Oxford, Coventry and London, England, and Glasgow, Scotland, according to the UK’s Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy. They will receive more than £50 million, or $65,470,750, in funding from the UK government’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, which works to address future opportunities and challenges.

“AI has the potential to [revolutionize] healthcare and improve lives for the better. That’s why our modern Industrial Strategy puts pioneering technologies at the heart of our plans to build a Britain fit for the future,” Greg Clark, UK secretary of state for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, said in a statement.

“The innovation at these new [centers] will help diagnose disease earlier to give people more options when it comes to their treatment, and make reporting more efficient, freeing up time for our much-admired NHS (National Health Service) staff time to spend on direct patient care.”

The five centers will each have a seperate focus.  

  • Based in Leeds, England, the Northern Pathology Imaging Collaborative (NPIDC) will help further digital pathology research.
  • The National Consortium of Intelligent Medical Imaging (NCIMI) in Oxford will look at how clinical imaging affects the delivery of more personalized care and earlier diagnosis for disease prevention and treatment.
  • The Coventry-based Pathology image data Lake for Analytics, Knowledge and Education (PathLAKE), will use NHS pathology data to drive economic growth in health-related AI.
  • The London Medical Imaging and Artificial Intelligence Centre for Value-based Healthcare will focus on using AI in medical imaging and related clinical data for quicker diagnosis and automating manual reporting.
  • The Industrial Centre for AI Research in Digital Diagnostics (I-CAIRD) in Glasgow will bring clinicians, healthcare leaders and small-to-medium enterprises together to answer clinical questions and solve healthcare challenges more quickly and efficiently.

The centers are expected to be up and running in 2019.

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Danielle covers Clinical Innovation & Technology as a senior news writer for TriMed Media. Previously, she worked as a news reporter in northeast Missouri and earned a journalism degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She's also a huge fan of the Chicago Cubs, Bears and Bulls. 

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