Completed Computing & AI NIHR-supported project Education & Skills

Inclusive medical AI: Exploring Diverse Perspectives

Funder NIHR (part of DHSC)
Recipient organisation NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre
NIHR support Recorded as supported by this research centre
Period Feb 2025 — Feb 2026

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

Medical AI systems are already making decisions about who gets diagnosed and treated, but they can also learn and amplify the same biases that have long disadvantaged certain patient groups. This workshop brings together researchers, patients, and industry experts to tackle a specific problem: medical AI that ignores existing biases risks widening health disparities rather than closing them. The World Health Organization has flagged that AI raises fundamental questions about equity, accessibility, and human autonomy in healthcare. Yet there is no established research agenda for making medical AI genuinely inclusive. The workshop uses design thinking—a structured method for defining problems and prototyping solutions—to develop one. If successful, the workshop will produce a white paper outlining priorities for inclusive medical AI and establish a community of practice to carry the work forward. That could shift how future AI systems are built, tested, and deployed in the NHS and beyond—not as neutral tools, but as technologies deliberately designed to serve all patient groups fairly. The immediate output is a research agenda, not a working system, but that agenda could shape funding decisions and development standards for years to come.

View original technical description
Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) have the potential to transform healthcare by improving diagnosis, treatment outcomes and resource allocation. However, medical AI can also perpetuate existing biases, which have historically disadvantaged underserved patient groups. Developing medical AI systems with disregard to existing biases may contribute to widening rather than removing health disparities. As pointed out by WHO, while AI offers significant opportunities, it also raises fundamental questions about accessibility, human autonomy, equity, and rights. It is crucial to examine these issues in a setting which allows for co-creation of multidisciplinary knowledge. This Lorentz workshop will explore the concept of inclusivity, collaboration and co-creation methods, best practices, barriers and facilitators and strategies to realise medical AI inclusivity, with the overall aim to develop a al research agenda for realising medical Ai inclusivity Using the method of design thinking as a framework throughout the workshop, the workshop will combine scientific insights with patient and industry perspectives to understand and define the problem and ideate and prototype solutions for inclusive medical AI. The goals for the workshop are to draft a white paper on Inclusive Medical AI and setting up a community of practice with which together we will try to set up new research on medical AI inclusivity.

Researchers

Lisa Ballard (Principal Investigator)

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Original classification

Data, Health and Society (DHS)

Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.