Privacy Notice - Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

This notice outlines how we will provide information regarding how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used and processed for the provision of direct care, research, audit and screening programmes.

AI use is the biggest and fastest moving change to computing in recent years and is becoming commonplace across all industry including primary care. With this being new technology, there is a requirement for additional Information Governance (IG) measures to ensure its use is safe and does not expose personal data about both patients and staff to any unnecessary risks. 

AI is defined as being the use of digital technology to create systems capable of performing tasks commonly thought to require human intelligence.

The use of AI could include visual perception, text generation, speech recognition or translation between languages.

AI tools can be both standalone products or embedded into other services and are used to give this organisation the ability to create human-like text and context and answer questions in a conversational manner and also to simplify processes to improve the efficiency, quality and speed of the organisation’s business processes.

Examples of typical AI use in primary care include:

• Generation of business meeting notes and any action points
• Support for clinicians during consultations to compile and document medical records
• Generation of summaries of various team meetings where service users and patients cases are discussed
• Generation of statistics for medical research purposes

This organisation may use a patient’s personal information in AI systems to provide their individual care. AI can help a health and care professional to reach a decision about care, for example, diagnosing a condition, or helping to choose a treatment option. In these cases, consent to the use of data is implied. 

Decisions will not be made by the AI system as the healthcare professional will always provide advice and allow the patient to make the final decision as to the care and treatment they receive. In most circumstances health and care staff will rely upon consent as the basis for accessing and using confidential patient information.