UK AI in Healthcare Market 2022-2028

UK AI in Healthcare Market 2022-2028

Healthcare industry in the UK is well developed and established due to the presence of separate publicly funded healthcare of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales each; funded by separate government and parliament. As per a report by the Commonwealth Fund ranking of developed-country healthcare systems in 2014, the healthcare system of the UK was ranked as the best globally and the categories included: Quality of Care; Access to Care and Efficiency, and Equity. The NHS system of each country uses General Practitioners (GPs) for providing primary healthcare and for making referrals to further services as required. Hospitals then provide more specialist services such as psychiatric illnesses, patients’ care and access to Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments.

Increased adoption of Artificial Intelligence technology can bring social and economic benefits to the nation. With Artificial Intelligence, data can be analyzed by the computer to learn accurately from the information provided at a speed higher than that of human. Artificial Intelligence offers major benefits in all the industries such as healthcare, transportation, logistics, entertainment and others. The software of the Artificial Intelligence can be integrated into existing system and process to make or suggest accurate decisions through enhanced use of information, resulting in the improvement of system and reduction of cost.

The healthcare industry is not immune to technological advancement and software. The healthcare industry of UK has started to harness this technology for better care of the patients, and for improving quality of life of the people and reducing cost in a significant amount. The use of such emerging technologies such as machine learning, deep learning or artificial intelligence has started to revolutionize the research and development activities in the healthcare industry. The innovation in science and technology is expected to improve diagnosis and treatment in the near future. The pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies have started adopting AI for leveraging the technology as it can reduce time and cost that are involved in the development of life-saving drugs. This is one of the major factors for the growth of AI in healthcare in the UK industry.

Moreover, the process of drug development takes an average of 12 years that cost more than $1 billion to the companies for taking drug from laboratory to pharmacy.AI based product and services are being developed which are capable of assisting the research process, analysing the data and easing the clinical trials. This allows pharmaceutical companies to adopt AI technology for enhancing the process of drug discovery resulting in the reduction of time as well as cost. The pharmaceutical giants are gaining interest in such technology keeping in mind the benefits offered by this technology to the healthcare industry of UK. Further, AI-enabled solutions allow the pharma companies for identifying appropriate patient pool, reducing or completely eliminating the need for some studies as well as predicting outcomes in a virtual patient in some cases. The players present in the market are adopting strategies to enhance their presence and to improve the customer experience. One of the primary strategies that has been observed in the market is partnership and collaboration. The pharmaceutical giants are collaborating with AI startups to integrate AI technology in their product line. A number of partnership and collaborations have been formed during 2021-2017 between leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and small AI-based companies, specifically startups, for discovering new biological targets and molecules; and finding innovative ways for the treatment of chronic diseases. For instance: GlaxoSmithKline plc, a UK-based company has teamed up with a number of AI companies (such as Exscientia and Cloud Pharmaceuticals, Inc.) for working on drug discovery and development. GSK in May 2021, has collaborated with an AI-driven drug design and development company, Cloud Pharmaceuticals, Inc., for drug discovery. In addition, the company in July 2017, along with Exscientia entered into a pre-clinical collaboration of $44.5 million for the discovery of novel molecules for up to 10 disease-related targets.

Furthermore, the University College London Hospitals, one of the biggest hospitals of the UK has unveiled its plans of using AI for performing tasks that are traditionally being performed by nurses and doctors such as diagnosing cancer on CT scans. UCLH and the Alan Turing Institute entered into a three-year partnership in May 2021, aiming at bringing machine learning to the National Health Services. Moreover, UCLH aims to overcome the issue regarding privacy concerns by which the previous collaborations between Google’s DeepMind and Royal Free Hospital in London have been overshadowed in which the health records of around 1.6 million identifiable patients were accidentally shared in 2017. Under the new collaboration, the hospitals will use the algorithms that will be trained on the servers of the hospitals for avoiding such kind of data breaches.

UK is the third largest economy after Germany and France in Europe. Majorly, the AI in healthcare market is significantly increasing owing to growing investment in UK. Further, according to the UK governments, over 50 leading companies and organization have contributed to the development of AI sector deal worth around $1.3 billion, including almost $390 million of private sector investment into UK. Additionally, 1,000 new government funded AI PhDs will focus on the innovation and AI research. Microsoft, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, McKinsey, and Pfizer are the US-based companies involved with the UK’s AI deal. Further, Global Brain, the Japanese company plans to invest approximately $48 million in UK tech start-ups. Also, planning to expand their geographical location by locating a European headquarters in the UK to help with AI-related projects. Furthermore, Chrysalix, Canadian venture capital will also open a European headquarters in the UK and plans to invest over $100 million in local start-ups specializing in AI and robotics.