More than half of UK citizens (56%) don’t trust the NHS to use AI to analyze patient data due to security and privacy concerns, according to a VMWare survey.
Additionally, a quarter (25%) of the more than 2,000 respondents to the VMWare survey said they were completely against the NHS using AI to process patient data.
Since the November 2022 release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT tool, the growing use of AI and growing public awareness have raised many concerns about data privacy. These include AI roles that create inference data.
Additionally, the data used to create and train large-scale language models such as ChatGPT is subject to scrutiny from data protection experts.
Dr Will Venters, Associate Professor of Information Systems at the London School of Economics, said: Information security The findings show that social, technical and legal barriers to the use of AI in the NHS must be overcome to fully realize the medical benefits of these technologies. .
“Patients need to accept its use. Back in 2016, there was considerable controversy over Google’s relationship with DeepMind and the sharing of data on 1.6 million patients by the Royal Free London NHS Trust. Avoiding serious controversy and political backlash should be part of an overall security and privacy strategy for sustainable AI,” he explained.
Guy Bartram, cloud evangelist EMEA at VMware, added that education and transparency about how to use AI and its benefits should be a priority.
“People need to be educated about how new technologies like AI treat their data, and the NHS should openly discuss its solutions and how the data security of the public is maintained. , can go a long way by promoting it, but if it doesn’t, it leaves room for questioning and we probably won’t do it in the future.”
Despite concerns, 45% of VMWare survey respondents said they were open to the NHS using AI to improve services, and 44% said it would help speed up diagnostic tests. , said they were satisfied with these technologies being used to process patient data.
data sovereignty concerns
The survey also found that 87% of UK consumers consider it important that NHS patient data is stored in the UK. Of these respondents, 39% believe that keeping this data within their borders ensures compliance with UK data privacy regulations.
More than a fifth (22%) said they don’t believe other countries protect their data as much as the UK, and 21% said this information would be exposed to foreign cyberthreats or threatened by foreign organizations. We believe that the possibility of being accessed by
In its report, VMWare highlighted that many of the UK’s NHS and social service providers are using public cloud services, which currently allow patient data to be stored in the UK, within the European Economic Area (EEA), or hosted in any country the UK deems appropriate.
Overall, the majority of consumers (59%) express confidence in the NHS’ ability to protect sensitive information.
Mr Venters expressed surprise at the level of opposition to NHS data leaving the UK, but acknowledged the strength of feelings about UK sovereignty should be reflected in the agency’s data practices.
“As Nigel Lawson once said, ‘For Britons the National Health Service is the closest thing to religion’ – people tend to trust it. Maintaining that trust over the next few decades will require a robust, patient-centric approach to data management and security.”
Bartram commented that the findings demonstrate the importance of demonstrating data sovereignty for the NHS and other important sectors to build consumer trust in patient data. He said this can be done by storing more data in sovereign clouds and ensuring that all data, including metadata, is kept within local jurisdictions.
“The NHS and other verticals must be selective about where their data resides, who is under their jurisdiction, how it is processed and in particular what is processed. Sensitive data. , or the processing or storage of data with privacy laws regarding data or metadata, should be subject only to the laws of the jurisdiction to which the owner is concerned,” he said. Information security.
The study was published on July 5, 2023.th Anniversary of the founding of the UK National Health Service (NHS).
