Government to put AI to work across health, justice, tax and planning

The government wants to put AI to use to help get patients out of hospital quicker.

Currently being piloted at Chelsea and Westminster NHS Trust, it is one of the projects to receive backing from Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer as part of the ‘AI Exemplars” programme – projects that can use AI to modernise services across health, justice, tax and planning.

DSIT said the AI-assisted tool can help doctors draft discharge documents faster by extracting key details from medical records, such as diagnoses and test results, using a large language model.  After a full review from a medical expert, the documents are then used to discharge a patient from a ward and refer them to other care services that may be needed. 

The government believes this will “radically improve an outdated system that can leave patients on wards unnecessarily for hours, waiting for time-pressed doctors providing urgent care to sit down and fill in forms before they can go home.”

It also noted that “In some cases, the current system for writing discharge summaries can also inaccurately record basic patient details like what treatment they’ve had, or changes to medication and put them in harm’s way.”

The NHS Federated Data Platform, a system designed to connect IT across health and care services, is hosting the AI-assisted discharge summaries tool. This aims to make handover information to different care services more efficient and secure, while also making it easier to use the technology across the country if tests are successful.

Another project, ‘Justice Transcribe, will be offered to Probation Officers to help them transcribe and take notes in their meetings with offenders after they leave prison. The technology, which was found to halve the time officers spent organising notes between meetings and in their personal time, is set to be given to all 12,000 probation officers later this year.

The technology is based on ‘Minute’, part of the Humphrey package of AI tools built by government to help make the civil service more efficient.

More AI Exemplars across government

Over the coming months, the exemplars will be developed and trialled, with those showing the most promise potentially rolled out more widely.

AI Exemplars include:

• Justice Transcribe, Ministry of Justice.
• ‘Humphrey’, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
• Education Content store, Department for Education.
• AI Tax Compliance, HMRC.
• ‘Extract’ and the Digital Planning Programme, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
• ‘Minute’ for Local Government, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
• GOV.UK Chat, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.

Planning

The AI Exemplars programme will include the ‘Extract’ tool, which aims to speed up planning approvals by converting decades-old, handwritten planning documents and maps into data in minutes. The government said it will power new planning software to cut the 250,000 estimated hours spent by planning officers each year manually checking these documents.

Schools

Other technology backed by the programme, the AI Content Store, aims to help make more accurate AI tools to support teachers to mark work and plan lessons.

Civil service

The Humphrey suite of AI tools is also included in the package. ‘Consult’, a tool in the package, analyses the thousands of responses any government consultation might receive in hours, before presenting policy makers and experts with interactive dashboards to explore what the public are saying directly.

It has been the first AI tool to undergo testing against a new ‘social readiness’ standard, where the tech was shared with members of the public to get their views on the value it adds, the strength of safeguards in place and the risks associated with using the technology.  Members of the public noted that Consult is well targeted to replace an “old school process” that is very “archaic” and ripe for improvement with AI.