AI interest is ablaze! Everyone from the public, using DALLE to generate images of what their cat would look like as a wizard, to enterprises, gaining summaries and actionable insights from their data, is on board.
It seems the sentiment has finally stretched to politicans as well. With the public sector not normally renowned for its speed in picking up new technologies (The UK's National Health Service (NHS) still uses pagers and fax), the speed at which the new government has made it a priority certainly shows its interest in the technology.
The British Prime Minister Keir Starmer today (January 13) used the AI strategy announcement to say he intends to "make Britain the world leader".
Alongside the release of the AI Opportunities Action Plan which saw £14 billion pegged for AI data centre projects, the announcement includes plans to build a supercomputer and create a new National Data Library to safely and securely unlock the value of public data and support AI development.
With one of the government's election pledges being to reduce NHS wait times and better prepare it for the future, it's no wonder they see AI as a golden ticket for improving public services.
“We are at an inflection point with AI; what we do now will shape the next decade and beyond,"
Cisco UK & Ireland Chief Technology Officer Chintan Patel said following the announcement.
Indeed, a key part of the strategy is to put AI to use in the public sector so they "spend less time doing admin and more time delivering the services working people rely on".
With the NHS employing around 1.5 million people and its Long Term Workforce Plan projecting it will need to expand its permanent workforce to 2.2–2.3 million by 2036/37, this AI integration will likely see great focus on the UC side.
So what exactly can we expect from an AI-enabled UC system the NHS could soon be integrating?
The NHS as it stands
The NHS in England is structured as a complex network of organisations,
At the local level, Integrated Care Boards plan and commission healthcare services tailored to regional needs.
Individual NHS Trusts operate independently with their own communication systems to facilitate internal and inter-organisational communication.
For instance, the University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust partnered with systems integrator Cinos to deliver a Cisco-powered UC telephony platform via its own Cinos Cloud service to bring the Trust's new hybrid working capabilities.
However, some organisations like NHS Informatics Merseyside provide services to several trusts, such as Voice over IP (VoIP) telephony services from Cisco and Mitel IP and Microsoft 365 communication services, including email and Microsoft Teams.
This harmonisation among some trusts allows for better inter-organisational sharing of records.