AI model being trained with NHS data from 57m people ‘could predict disease'
An artificial intelligence (AI) model is being trained using NHS data from 57 million people in England in the hope it could predict disease and complications before they happen.
The world-first study, led by researchers at University College London (UCL) and King's College London (KCL), could help 'unlock a healthcare revolution', officials said.
The model, know as Foresight, uses similar technology to ChatGPT but rather than predicting the next sentence it predicts future health conditions based on a patient's medical history.
As part of the pilot, it will be trained using eight routinely collected datasets from across England, including hospital admissions, A&E attendances and Covid-19 vaccination rates, which have been stripped of personal information.
Dr Chris Tomlinson, of UCL, said: 'Foresight is a really exciting step towards being able to predict disease and complications before they happen, giving us a window to intervene and enabling shift towards more preventative healthcare at scale.
'And to give a practical example of what that actually looks like, we could use Foresight to look across the whole population and predict the risk of, for example, unscheduled hospitalisation.
'This is a really significant event that often heralds deterioration in the patient's health but can occur from a variety of different causes, and also has a major resource implication on the health service.
'We can then use Foresight to understand the drivers for that deterioration, and potentially suggest personalising opportunities for intervention so that might include, for example, optimising medications to improve blood pressure control and reduce the risk of, say, stroke.'
Foresight is currently restricted to Covid-19-related research.
Dr Tomlinson added: 'We're looking at predicting Covid-19 outcomes – which may help us inform the next pandemic – but we're also testing the model's ability to generalise to other important healthcare outcomes, such as predicting the risk of hospitalisation or death in the next year, as well as the onset of over 1,000 different conditions.
'Ultimately, we'd like to increase the depth and capability of Foresight by including richer sources of data – information like physicians' notes and the results of investigations such as blood tests or scans.'
The pilot study will operate within NHS England's Secure Data Environment, which will provide access to de-personalised records with patient data remaining under strict NHS control.
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