24 October 2024

The AI Centre for Value-Based Healthcare (AI4VBH) has partnered with King's Health Partners and radiology AI platform developer deepc to accelerate the adoption and deployment of radiology AI in the NHS.

The collaboration will see deepc deploy its industry-leading platform, deepcOS, to accelerate and scale the adoption of radiology AI technologies efficiently, safely and securely across six leading NHS Trusts, with the intention to expand to 10 Trusts.

The first six NHS Trusts to deploy deepcOS will be:

  • Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust;
  • King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust;
  • Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust;
  • Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust;
  • University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust; and
  • East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust.

Radiology is fundamental to the diagnostic process with approximately 133,000 scans produced every day in the UK, but the NHS faces a 29% shortfall of clinical radiologists to analyse those images.

Radiology AI has the potential to relieve these backlogs by increasing the number of scans radiologists can analyse while improving the accuracy of the diagnosis. There are now more than 1,000 clinically proven radiology AI solutions available to health systems and organisations globally covering a wide variety of use cases.

However, few NHS patients are currently benefiting from these advances because deploying radiology AI solutions in clinical settings remains expensive, time-consuming and technically complex, particularly when dealing with legacy IT systems.

deepc’s unified, scalable platform has been built to address this challenge. It allows health systems to benefit from the rapid innovation advancing within radiology AI through a single integration that covers the data privacy, security, regulatory, procurement, integration, deployment, and operational challenges that can often delay the adoption of such new technologies.

By making it quicker, easier and cheaper for participating NHS Trusts to access and incorporate state-of-the-art radiology AI tools via a single platform into existing workflows, deepc will help to reduce waiting times for patients, enable clinicians to reach the right diagnosis faster and help relieve the pressure on radiology departments within the NHS.

Over the past five years, the AI4VBH has developed numerous platforms to provide secure access to high-quality electronic health data for the development of AI models and deployment of AI technology.

deepc’s partnership with the AI4VBH will be focused on providing technology, resources and expertise to support the continued development of new and existing innovations and to improve the Centre’s ability to deploy them in clinical settings.

Longer term, the partnership between deepc and the AI4VBH will also include collaborations to continue providing a safe and secure independent platform to facilitate other organisations and startups working to develop the next generation of AI tools for healthcare.

"The AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare aims to transform the potential of AI by providing a home to develop solutions and share guidance with hospitals looking to deploy these technologies. Our partnership with deepc will begin by helping six NHS Trusts access more than 75 clinically proven AI tools, but that is only the beginning. deepc will play a vital role in supporting the AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare’s future growth. Working together, we can make the NHS a true leader in the safe and effective use of AI, ultimately delivering benefits to our patients."

- Prof Sebastien Ourselin FREng FMedSci, Director of The AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare

"deepc was created to bridge the rapidly growing divide between what the best AI innovations can now achieve within radiology, and health systems’ ability to access those advances. Hospitals and doctors know that AI can help them and their patients but they need support to unlock the benefits and navigate the technical and regulatory challenges. We’re incredibly proud to announce this long-term strategic collaboration with the AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare to help accelerate and scale the adoption of radiology AI tools within the NHS. Together, we hope to lay the foundations for the NHS to become a true nucleus of excellence for radiology AI globally."

- Dr. Franz Pfister, CEO and Co-Founder of deepc

Earlier this year, deepc opened its first UK office located in the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering, King's College London and has already partnered with the King’s Health Partners Digital Health Hub as well as BT to boost its digital health programme across the NHS.

Find out more about KHP's work on digital health and data sciences.