An AI Task Force has been established for the Liverpool City region, bringing together senior leaders from across industry, academia, healthcare, and public services to lead on ambitions for AI research, health innovation, and digital transformation.
Nicola Hodson, former chief executive of IBM UK & Ireland, has been named as chair, with 14 other members being selected to shape the task force. Among them is Kate Warriner, chief transformation and digital officer at Alder Hey NHS Foundation Trust.
The Liverpool City Region Combined Authority outlines aims for the task force to advise on the development of AI in support of strengthened public services and inclusive economic growth, working with local teams to design innovative solutions for the public sector.
The task force will also work alongside an AI Academic Community of Practice, which the authority describes as “an advisory network to support the responsible cross-sector adoption and integration of Artificial Intelligence within the Liverpool City Region”.
Tiffany St James, the authority’s chief AI officer, highlights the “huge opportunity” that the move offers for Liverpool in being at the forefront of AI innovation, adding: “We will have the expertise, knowledge and connections within the AI Task Force to drive this forward, creating a pioneering and innovative ecosystem to test and scale emerging technologies, transform our region, and make it a leading place for business growth.”
In July, the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority published findings from a study to highlight that £5.2 million in social value has been generated by a £500,000 investment across the Liverpool City Region’s Life Sciences Innovation Zone.
One of the success stories is an AI-powered sleep platform, MySleepHealth, that aims to support people living with autism, ADHD, insomnia, and shift work disorder by combining AI technology and evidence-based sleep guidance. Over the last 12 months, the platform has been built, investment has been secured, and NHS trials are about to begin, the combined authority notes.
The independent evaluation, conducted by Brunel University of London and Northumbria University, called the scheme “truly innovative”, and “life-changing”, suggesting it could be expanded successfully to other regions. Eight other businesses have also reportedly been created through the programme in its first year, securing over £376,000 in investment, grant funding, and commercial partnerships.
Wider trend: Health AI
The National Commission into the Regulation of AI has put forward a series of recommendations for a future regulatory framework, finding strong support for the use of AI in healthcare being “conditional, rather than automatic”. The central conclusion, the commission goes on, is that future regulation needs to be more proportionate, lifecycle-based, and system-wide. “Current approaches were largely designed for products that are more static and easier to reliably assess at a single point in time,” it states. “AI-enabled products may iterate rapidly, perform differently in different settings and depend on the data, workflows, people and organisations around them.”
The government has launched the first procurement competitions for its £100 million sovereign AI R&D procurement scheme, aiming to support British AI companies to “start here, scale here and win globally”. According to the government, the scheme is designed to act as a venture capital fund, focusing on demonstrator-stage solutions ready to be tested in real-world environments. Applications will be assessed by the sovereign AI team, participating government departments, and technical experts, with the first competitions designed to test the delivery model for future phases.
An AI spin-out from the University of Birmingham has launched, with an aim to speed up the process of extracting data from EHRs to support medical researchers and reduce the time for drug safety and effectiveness studies. Dexter AI is based on a software developed by a team from the Birmingham Department of Applied Health Sciences, Professor Krishnarajah Nirantharakumar, Dr Krishna Gokhale, and Professor Joht Singh Chandan. Its website outlines the potential for use in the design of epidemiological studies, cohort identification, emulating clinical trials with real world data, automating clinical audits, and enabling population health management.
