A leaked report from Tony Blair’s Institute for Global Change has revealed that the former UK Prime Minister believes AI can be used to replace local GP surgeries.
Initially covered by POLITICO, the report appears to have been accidentally published by the Blair Institute last Friday before being deleted and re-published on Monday, August 29th.
In the document, Blair advocates for the implementation of a “national AI-powered health-analytics platform,” which would be used to group patients by healthcare requirements rather than geographic location.
The platform would allow the NHS to reduce the number of GP surgeries by replacing them with AI-powered primary care centers.
These changes are part of Blair’s wider strategy of providing every UK citizen with a digital health record (DHR). By consolidating a patient’s health data, the Blair Institute believes that it will eliminate silos, improve primary care efficiency, and help the NHS “prepare for the AI era,” as the report explains:
Health data are what AI is trained and deployed on – and, increasingly, data are used to regulate AI.
“A DHR would support the development, adoption and spread of AI technologies in the NHS, supporting the drive to increase productivity.”
Alongside peer-reviewed journals and clinical insights from practitioners, these DHR’s would be used to inform and train the health-analytics platform, with the end goal being an AI-powered interface that can provide patients with support and advice.
The report describes the tool as a personal digital health assistant or “AI Doctor,” that will interact with patients via a chatbot with large language model (LLM) capabilities.
“Citizens could then consult this AI doctor to help maintain their health (through personalized prevention plans and bespoke health coaching), for advice when they are unwell (through personalized symptom checks, self-care, triage and navigation advice) and to help them manage LTCs,” the report states.
Blair believes that these AI doctors could also assist clinicians by being integrated into triage and navigation systems like 111 and GP management platforms.
The report argues that it would enhance clinical decision-making and population health management, potentially leading to more accurate and personalized treatment decisions in the future.
The Reasoning and the Reaction
While the report states that its recommendations are based on a Blair Institute study (A New National Purpose: Harnessing Data for Health), and advice from a selection of “experts,” the current state of GP customer service was also outlined in a recent GP Patient Survey published by the UK Government.
The findings of the survey show that even though surgeries currently offer digital services via a website and the NHS app, many customers still prefer making contact by phone.
Interestingly, when asked how easy or difficult it is to contact their GP practice by phone, website, or app, respondents reported fairly similar answers. Although phone came out on top with 49.7 percent finding it easy, website (47.9 percent), and App (44.8 percent) were not far behind.
However, these results are somewhat skewed, as phone was by far the most used of the three services. Of the almost 700,000 patients surveyed, only 47,059 stated that they hadn’t tried contacting by phone, whereas 335,628 had not used the website, and 447,468 had not tried contacting via the NHS app.
While Blair’s plans for silo-free access to patient health data and reduced stress on medical professionals sound beneficial on paper, arguably, they do not take into account the voice of the customer.
Given that over half of patients surveyed by the UK Government have not used either the NHS website or App, expecting them to start conversing with AI doctors via chatbots seems like a large leap.
