NHS ‘missing opportunity to leverage AI’ says Morley
The NHS is limiting the effectiveness of AI by focusing on how the technology can improve individuals’ health, according to Dr Jessica Morley, postdoctoral researcher at Yale University’s Digital Ethics Center.
During her ‘Spotlight on AI session’ which took place at Rewired on 19 March 2025, Morley called for a “different conversation about AI”.
AI policy goals in healthcare tend to be about creating more “targeted treatments” and “empowering people to take better care of their health”, which is “problematic”, she insisted.
“What empowerment actually means is shifting responsibility from the state to the individual.
“We should focus on population goals not individual goals; it’s more effective and it plays to AI’s strengths,” she said.
Morley emphasised that AI “operates at a systems level”.
“It is not a series of individual products; it is more akin to electricity. If we keep [thinking about it as a kind of product] we will get it wildly wrong,” Morley added.
Session chair Ruth Holland, director of data and analytics at the London Secure Environment, introduced Morley as a “voice of reason in a sea of hype about AI” and said her session at Rewired 2024 had been “absolutely fantastic”.
Morley said: “I was called a Luddite after the last Rewired, which was super fun.”
After the session at Rewired 25, Morley told Digital Health News: “The NHS is missing the opportunity to leverage AI for the population because it is so focused on using AI for things like prediction and prevention at an individual level and not necessarily at a societal level – which I think is antithetical to the ethos of the NHS.”
She added that the NHS should “change the emphasis” and work out “what we are trying to achieve”.
Morley suggested identifying the reasons why the NHS is failing to meet its constitutional pledge to be for “everyone”, and then using AI to address these issues.
“At the moment we build AI and then think ‘how can we not leave people out?’ I’m saying flip the narrative,” Morley said.
