The Scottish Government has published its five-year AI strategy to 2031 alongside an “AI Stack” detailing areas where action should be taken to ensure an effective response to AI as an emerging technology.
Layers of the AI Stack cover users, adoption and skills, companies and products, innovation and R&D, data centres and infrastructure, semiconductors, data, and regulation. “If we increase outputs and activity in every layer of the Stack, we will achieve our purpose which is: to harness the potential of AI to drive responsible growth in all sectors and at every level of our society,” the government notes.
By the end of the strategy’s lifecycle in 2031, the government hopes to achieve outcomes including equality of access “based on widespread literacy, trust and confidence in engaging with AI”, collective data stewardship and data sharing leadership to promote the safe use of data for good, embedded AI in critical national infrastructure to support public service delivery, and tech clusters and a pipeline of start-ups and scale-ups in national and international markets.
By the end of March 2027, the government commits to completing a total of ten key actions. AI Scotland will be positioned as the national flagship programme to drive strategy delivery, AI industry champions will be appointed in priority sectors and regions, a nationwide engagement programme will be launched to take on board public concerns and develop trusted solutions, and a framework will be implemented to ensure the safe and ethical use of AI in health and social care.
A new national AI adoption programme will be launched to accelerate SME productivity and introduce a new AI Leadership Academy, a future jobs panel will be set up to assess the workforce impact of AI and enable national skills planning, and an AI scale-up accelerator will be developed to connect high growth companies with experienced entrepreneurs and investment networks. The government also plans for an innovation programme to apply commercial and research AI expertise in public services, to collaborate with partners to promote Scotland as a centre for green data centres, and to launch a data matchmaking pilot to allow organisations to access public sector datasets in support of innovation.
Overseeing the delivery of the strategy will be AI Scotland, a new national transformation programme responsible for coordinating the actions set out by the government. An expert advisory board will also be put in place to evaluate AI Scotland’s activities and guide future programmes, including AI champions from key sectors. “In the first year of this strategy, the Expert Advisory Board will also advise on the development of a comprehensive business case that sets out the preferred long-term organisational model for AI Scotland,” the government states. “Potential models under consideration include a cluster management organisation or a non-profit company.”
Setting out the foundations for the strategy to build on, the government highlights existing AI research and innovation taking place across the country, including the £750 million UK National Supercomputing Centre to be based at the University of Edinburgh, the National Robotarium at Heriot-Watt University, and a £3.5 million project to develop the first open source AI harm auditing tool for use by frontline workers in identifying risks like bias or unintended impacts, taking place at the University of Glasgow.
Examples of AI in use in the public sector are also shared, such as the NeurEYE project that is using one million retinal scans from high-street optometrists to develop AI that can detect dementia risk at early stage; the AI-TRiPS clinical trial using AI in emergency trauma care to predict life-threatening complications like severe blood loss; and the SPARRAv4 emergency admission prediction tool analysing over 4.8 million health records to identify those most at risk of emergency hospital care in the next year.
Wider trend: Health AI
HTN was joined by a panel including Ciara Moore, EPR operations director at Bath, Salisbury and Great Western Group, Stuart Cooney, CTO at Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust, and Julian Wiggins, healthcare solution director at Rackspace Technology, for a discussion focusing on cloud adoption, AI maturity, and cyber resilience. Panellists explored how healthcare organisations are tackling delivery, legacy systems, and rising digital expectations, and what this means for future strategy and plans. We also looked at the fragmented cloud landscape, integration pressures, legacy infrastructure, AI, and the growing urgency around cyber resilience, finishing by asking where NHS leaders should prioritise investment and focus in 2026.
A study exploring informed consent for ambient documentation using generative AI in outpatient care has highlighted nuances including that patients are more likely to self-censor when talking about mental and sexual health or illicit activity during consultations. The study, published in Jama Network Open, was conducted from March to December 2024 in ambulatory practices across specialities in a “large urban academic health centre”, involving 18 clinicians and 103 patients in an operational proof-of-concept.
Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust is to launch the next phase of its AI collaboration with Microsoft, looking to increase access for colleagues to Copilot and establish an MFT “Agent Factory” to support teams in designing and implementing AI tools to automate routine operational tasks. The trust has already rolled out Dragon Copilot Ambient Voice Technology and 1,500 Microsoft 365 Copilot licences across a range of roles. Over the next three years, an additional 6,500 Copilot licences will be granted to MFT per year, reportedly enabling access for all corporate staff, and 1,600 frontline colleagues. Alongside this, the trust plans to invest in training and development to promote colleague confidence in the use of AI.
