A blended digital prevention team from the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and UK Health Security Agency has completed early research into the potential of an AI Health Coach. This marks the launch of the Health Coach programme – a 10 Year Health Plan commitment to help people take greater control of their health.
The discovery phase found that many people struggle to maintain momentum once they start behaviour change programmes, with AI technology presenting significant opportunities to improve the offer of personalised support, with timely reminders and clear progress tracking to help people stay on track.
We have published the full AI Health Coach discovery summary on NHS.uk.
What’s next?
The project will now move into an alpha phase, aiming to validate use cases for this technology across the established NHS Better Health products that already support people to get more active, drink less, quit smoking, manage their weight and take care of their mental health and wellbeing. Together, these apps and websites are used by an estimated almost 20 million people each year, giving this project a unique opportunity to test the impact of AI on a national scale.
This is a government-first project exploring the safe deployment of public-facing generative AI as a personalised prevention tool at national scale. The alpha phase will begin to test whether an AI Health Coach can truly help people form long-lasting habits, ensure it works fairly for all groups, and provides safe escalation pathways for users who may need clinical support.
By testing AI Health Coach on the trusted NHS Better Health platform and exploring how it could integrate with wider NHS services and the NHS app, this joint programme has the potential to transform how millions of people access behaviour change support in the years ahead.
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Please get in touch with digitalproducts@dhsc.gov.uk
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