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AI team at NHSX opens Dragon’s Den-style opportunity for innovators

The AI Lab team at NHSX has launched a call to find, fund and resource innovations to support the development of AI in health and care.

The team are looking for innovations that solve operational and back-end processes, and highlight that the projects must have a clear problem statement or use case.

Through a new round of a Dragons’ Den-style pitching opportunity, the main objective is to take innovations and help apply AI solutions to healthcare settings where usually it would not be possible to do so. 

The winner of the event last year was Data Lens; an initiative that focused on bringing different data sets together using natural language processing. 

Invitations to the event are open to health and care professionals in arm’s length bodies, public sector healthcare organisations, NHS Trusts, and AI solutions that are considered transferable on a national scale rather than “local.”  

Giuseppe Sollazzo, head of NHSX AI Skunkworks, said “We have a problem-first approach: come to us with a defined real-life problem that afflicts the healthcare system.”

The project that is chosen by the NHSX panel will have its innovation fully funded and will implement the project over a 12-week period. Applications for the event will have to be submitted by 20 March. 

For further information, email aiskunkworks@nhsx.nhs.uk. The deadline to apply is 20 March 2021, ahead of an event on 1 April 2021.

The winner will be announced on 15 April 2021, and supported from April to August 2021.