A new £28 million UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training at Imperial College London will train over 120 researchers to develop patient-ready technology.
The UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training in Digital Healthcare will train a new generation of PhD-level researchers, including clinical PhD fellows and allied healthcare professionals, to develop AI systems that address healthcare challenges with a focus on patient needs and societal values.
This is an incredible opportunity for the UK and NHS, and one that demonstrates Imperial College London’s thriving digital healthcare ecosystem.Professor Aldo FaisalDirector and PI, UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training in Digital Healthcare
Centre Director and Principal Investigator Professor Aldo Faisal, from the Departments of Computing and Bioengineering, said: “This is an incredible opportunity for the UK and NHS, and one that demonstrates Imperial College London’s thriving digital healthcare ecosystem.
“The Centre will allow us to develop a new generation of more than 120 future leaders who we will recruit over the next five years. During their PhD studies they develop patient-ready solutions that align with patient needs. Our aim is to help transform the healthcare ecosystem and help reduce the unmet demand for health and care.
“Designing patient-ready AI requires not only state of the art research in AI and healthcare, but also understanding the regulatory, legal, ethical, and human constraints that are specific to health and care. This means it is extremely challenging to develop and deploy practical AI systems. We have created over the past five years an ecosystem of experts, institutions, stakeholders, data, and networks so thatour new UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training in Digital Healthcare is ready to face this challenge head on.”
The new Centre aims to develop AI technologies that will:
- Make healthcare provision more efficient and effective by increasing productivity, freeing clinicians from routine tasks to allow them to focus on critical and complex problems
- Develop AI-based diagnostics and digital biomarkers that can detect disease earlier and faster, and monitor health more precisely at home
- Develop AI-based systems that support clinical decision making to deliver optimised personal treatments, giving patients access to the best-in-care treatment strategies wherever they live
- Accelerate the discovery of new drugs, disease mechanisms, and treatment pathways using AI, with the ability to link to human lifestyle data, genetics and medical records
- Prevent disease and maximise the healthy life span of citizens through AI-informed digital public health technologies, such as digitally nudging them towards healthier behaviours