Summary: Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Healthcare Inquiry Scoping Session

In March 2026 the Secretariat for the All-Party Parliamentary Health Group (APHG) hosted a partnership scoping session for a new inquiry on the use of AI in healthcare. The meeting was attended by key stakeholders from the health and tech industry. Chaired by Dr Simon Opher MP, participants shared key themes and topics that the inquiry should consider in its scope in the forthcoming inquiry.  

The key themes identified were:  

• data and infrastructure 

• regulation 

• procurement 

• workforce and education 

• patient trust and consent.  

Participants highlighted the absence of a sovereign NHS data infrastructure as a foundational concern. Data is effectively outsourced to third-party organisations, with no clear policy governing how it is shared or what the broader implications are for patient safety. Healthcare professionals also observed that NHS data is widely acknowledged to be of poor quality, yet there is currently no systematic initiative to address this at the point of care. Interoperability was also identified as an urgent priority for ensuring systems function efficiently. 

Stakeholders noted that the current regulatory framework was not designed with AI in mind and is widely regarded by experts and practitioners as inadequate. Gaps in the regulatory framework include: the absence of any clear distinction between clinical and non-clinical AI, the lack of a post-market surveillance framework to address AI tools that drift, hallucinate, or are misused over time and, perhaps most critically, there is no policy defining what AI should be explicitly prohibited from doing autonomously in clinical settings. 

Procurement emerged as a significant and recurring concern throughout discussions; procurement processes are so fragmented and decentralised that suppliers face hundreds of separate procurement exercises rather than engaging with a coherent national market. 

Ensuring the workforce is prepared for the changes AI brings remains an area of notable policy underdevelopment. There is currently no systematic AI literacy training embedded in undergraduate clinical education and no policy framework exists for monitoring and managing the risk of clinician de-skilling as AI assumes more routine tasks.  Funding models also remain misaligned with AI-driven productivity gains, meaning that time saved through AI does not translate into tangible financial benefit for the organisations that deploy it.   

Stakeholders raised serious concerns about the absence of consistent national standards for informing patients when AI is being used in their care. Public understanding of how medical device regulation applies to AI tools is extremely low, and participants noted that no communication strategy currently exists to address this gap. These issues point to an urgent need to build public trust through transparency, clear consent frameworks, and meaningful mechanisms for patient involvement.  

These themes will be used to inform the scope and direction of Policy Connect’s AI in Healthcare inquiry.  

For further information regarding Policy Connect’s AI in Healthcare inquiry, please contact Lavanya Rangarajan (lavanya.rangarajan@policyconnect.org.uk)