The Independent Review of Equity in Medical Devices, chaired by the University’s Professor Dame Margaret Whitehead, calls for urgent action on artificial intelligence (AI) to stop patient harm.
Set up in 2022 by the then Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the review sought to establish the extent and impact of ethnic and other unfair biases in the performance of medical devices commonly used in the NHS. It was commissioned amid concerns that such biases may lead to suboptimal treatment for the affected groups in the population.
The review focused on three types of medical device where evidence suggested that the potential for harm was substantial. These were optical devices such as pulse oximeters, AI-enabled devices and certain genomics applications, such as polygenic risk scores.
The resulting report outlines the expert panel’s findings and sets out recommended actions.
The Expert Review Panel led by Professor Dame Margaret Whitehead included Professors Raghib Ali (Cambridge University), Enitan Carrol (The University of Liverpool and North West Clinical Research Network), Chris Holmes (The Alan Turing Institute and Oxford University) and Frank Kee (Queens University, Belfast).
- Download the full Independent Review of Equity in Medical Devices report (PDF, 4.6MB)
- Read the Equity in Medical Devices summary (Word, 56KB)
- Download the Equity in Medical Devices quick read (Word, 27KB)
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