Technology, Data & AI
69mentions · last 12 months↓
View full analysis →The Science and Technology Committee of the House of Lords scrutinises scientific and technological policy across government departments and research institutions. This select committee takes oral evidence from ministers, experts, and stakeholders and produces detailed reports on matters of scientific concern. It operates with cross-party membership to examine how science and innovation inform UK policy and practice. The committee's recent work has concentrated heavily on artificial intelligence applications in the NHS, examining how organisations including Genomics England, Health Data Research UK, and the Catapult network are deploying AI tools for health innovation and personalised medicine. It has also investigated government funding mechanisms, calling witnesses from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and UK Research and Innovation to understand investment priorities in AI and the future of work. A separate strand of inquiry has examined forensic science reform in policing, following evidence sessions with the Home Office on the state of forensic capabilities within law enforcement.
23 sessions published in the last 12 months
Click any cell in the heatmap to see the sessions held that day and the insights extracted from them.
536 insights
14 Jul 2026
The committee scrutinised UKRI chief executive Sir Ian Chapman on the new UKRI strategy, including the move from input-counting to outcomes, the new discovery/applied/growth-driving funding buckets, and the shift toward more strategic, partnership-based investment. Members pressed him on grant application delays, AI and peer review reform, data transparency, international and regional priorities, and the handling of STFC funding pressures and facility costs. Chapman committed to quarterly publication of performance data, beta testing a new public Gateway to Research tool, and continuing experiments to redesign grant assessment. He also defended the STFC settlement as responsible budget management, denied political interference, and said UKRI would increasingly act as a national steward, catalyst and diligence engine rather than simply a grant distributor.
07 Jul 2026
The committee scrutinised the Government’s plan to make the NHS a leader in personalised medicine and AI, including newborn genomic testing, polygenic risk scoring, chest X-ray AI, ambient voice technology, robotic surgery, and the Health Data Research Service. Ministers and officials repeatedly stressed a lifecycle approach to AI safety, continuous evaluation, and better pathways to move proven innovation from pilots into routine NHS use. They also gave several concrete delivery commitments, including full rollout of chest X-ray AI by 2029, a national procurement/innovation pathway for healthtech, a forthcoming workforce update, and continued work on legal and governance arrangements for the single patient record and HDRS. A major theme was how to fund adoption at scale, how to reduce trust-by-trust variation, and how to balance sovereign capability, public trust, and commercial access to NHS data.
30 Jun 2026
The committee scrutinised MHRA chief executive Lawrence Tallon on how the agency is speeding up access to innovative NHS treatments while keeping safety controls. Key themes were parallel MHRA-NICE processes, use of health data and genomics to support personalised medicines and rare disease therapies, the regulation of AI and software as medical devices, alignment with FDA/EMA systems, and reforms to clinical trial approvals. Tallon said the Government supports MHRA plans to take direct powers over medical devices, and he called for investment in technology and a revised fee structure to fund faster, more predictable regulation.
24 Jun 2026
The committee scrutinised how NICE sets value-for-money thresholds, uses QALYs and flexibilities for severe, rare and curative treatments, and how the UK-US pharmaceutical pricing arrangement may increase access while raising NHS spending. Professor Benger defended NICE’s independence, said the system should keep a health lens, and argued the key problem is downstream implementation, fragmentation and poor data rather than lack of NICE powers. In the second panel, NHS oncology witnesses described rapid adoption where pathways work, but highlighted major barriers in trusts: lack of staff time, procurement and transformation capacity, patchy local implementation, slow guideline updates, gaps in data, and weak infrastructure for scaling genomics and AI. Both panels stressed that the NHS needs better end-to-end pathways from regulation and appraisal to routine use, plus living guideline updates, more routine research leadership, and stronger real-world data collection.
16 Jun 2026
The committee scrutinised how AI, genomics and digital pathology/radiology could improve personalised medicine in the NHS, but witnesses repeatedly stressed that benefits are constrained by outdated IT, fragmented data, workforce shortages, patchy digital rollout and weak validation/regulation. Across both panels, witnesses argued that the NHS is good at buying technology but poor at implementation and scaling, with “pilotitis”, misaligned incentives, and inconsistent commissioning blocking national adoption. They called for stronger standardisation, more funding for implementation and change management, better post-market surveillance and evidence generation, and more enabling regulation. Government and NHS positions surfaced in the discussion through references to the 10-year plan, the workforce plan, central funding, and the need for a more modern regulatory process, but the dominant message was that current system capacity and governance are not yet adequate to deliver the promised gains.
09 Jun 2026
The committee scrutinised how the NHS can move from pilots to system-wide adoption in innovation, personalised medicine and AI. Roland Sinker argued that progress depends less on isolated programmes than on an ecosystem approach: focused national missions, stronger co-ownership across regulators, industry and the NHS, standardised procurement and contracting, better data plumbing, and ring-fenced support for mid-career clinical academics. The academic witnesses backed the need for standardisation and regulation reform, but were much more critical about current NHS data access, interoperability, procurement and clinical-trials bureaucracy, arguing these barriers are slowing patient benefit and making the UK unattractive for innovators. Both sessions stressed that prevention, visible metrics and value-based procurement should drive adoption, while data access should be simplified and made cheaper or free for researchers.