AI healthcare is coming to the NHS, and the rulebook dates from the hip-replacement era

Here's what it means

As the use of AI in the sector rises, the watchdog that regulates every medical device in the UK has published 44 recommendations.

It was an independent commission with input from more than 12,000 patients and clinicians that compiled the report.

Here’s what the AI healthcare recommendations suggest

They include monitoring AI products continuously and stripping their approval if they malfunction.

For example, a patient right to know whether AI is involved in their care.

Recommended are also powers to penalise developers whose products fail to meet standards, and an AI "L plate" system, letting new models be trialled under close supervision.

Speaking to the BBC, MHRA chief Lawrence Tallon said patients will “increasingly see AI as part of the way that normal NHS healthcare is delivered”.

Tallon added: “The medical devices regulatory framework predominantly dates from a period where we were thinking about things like hip replacements and knee replacements, or smaller things like stethoscopes and plasters.”

While current rules may work for simple AI trained to spot symptoms on scans, according to Tallon, this does not apply to complex models.

“Unlike most of the medical products we're used to regulating, these products continue to change after the point of authorization," he said.

"As new data gets fed in, they learn, they adapt, they drift”, he added.

AI scribes are reportedly used by 40% of UK-based GPs, so the technology is already in the building.

It comes in a year of an AI researcher quitting with a warning to humanity, and an NHS busy with the basics, which includes the flu vaccine rollout.