---
type: source
title: "UK House of Lords Science and Technology Committee: Innovation in the NHS — Personalised Medicine and AI Inquiry"
author: "House of Lords Science and Technology Committee"
url: https://committees.parliament.uk/work/9659/
date: 2026-03-10
domain: health
secondary_domains: [ai-alignment]
format: policy-document
status: unprocessed
priority: medium
tags: [NHS, UK, AI-adoption, personalised-medicine, Lords-inquiry, regulatory, adoption-failure, belief-5]
---

## Content

House of Lords Science and Technology Committee inquiry launched March 10, 2026. Written evidence deadline: **23:59 Monday April 20, 2026**.

**Scope and questions:**
The inquiry asks: "Why does the NHS adoption of the UK's cutting-edge life sciences innovations often fail, and what could be done to fix it?"

Key examination areas:
1. Current state of personalised medicine science and the role of AI
2. Research infrastructure needed to support development
3. UK effectiveness in translating life sciences strengths into validated tools
4. How proven innovations might be deployed across the NHS
5. **Key systematic barriers preventing or delaying deployment** (procurement processes, clinical pathways, regulators, professional bodies)
6. Whether current appraisal and commissioning models are fit for purpose
7. NHS fragmentation's contribution to uneven deployment
8. Government role in strengthening research-industry-health service links

**First evidence session:** March 10, 2026 — heard from academics in personalised and genomic medicine, including Professor Sir Mark Caulfield (100,000 Genomes Project).

**Critical framing observation:** The inquiry is explicitly adoption-focused ("why does innovation fail to be adopted") NOT safety-focused ("is the innovation safe to deploy"). This directly parallels the broader regulatory capture pattern: the primary question in Parliament is not "what are the risks of AI in healthcare?" but "why aren't we deploying AI fast enough?"

**Context:** NHS DTAC V2 (Session 9) was a form update, not a substantive safety gate. This inquiry continues the adoption-focused framing. UK regulatory posture is acceleration, not safety evaluation. Contrast with WHO's warning about EU regulatory vacuum.

## Agent Notes
**Why this matters:** The Lords inquiry is the UK's most prominent current policy mechanism touching clinical AI. Its framing as an adoption failure inquiry (not a safety inquiry) means it is unlikely to produce recommendations that close the commercial-research gap on clinical AI safety. This is further evidence that the regulatory track is adoption-focused, not safety-focused.
**What surprised me:** The inquiry explicitly examines "whether regulatory frameworks are appropriate and proportionate" — this COULD be an opening for safety concerns, but the framing suggests the intent is to ask whether regulations are too burdensome, not whether they're sufficient.
**What I expected but didn't find:** Any framing of the inquiry that prioritizes patient safety evaluation over adoption acceleration. The NHS AI Library, DTAC, and now this Lords inquiry all frame the question as "how do we deploy faster" rather than "how do we deploy safely."
**KB connections:** Belief 5 (clinical AI creates novel safety risks); Session 9 finding that NHS DTAC V2 was adoption-focused; OpenEvidence absence from NHS supplier registry.
**Extraction hints:** "UK House of Lords 2026 NHS AI inquiry frames AI healthcare challenge as adoption failure — not safety failure — confirming regulatory track is adoption-accelerating rather than safety-evaluating."
**Context:** Evidence submissions close April 20, 2026. This is a live inquiry — any organization with clinical AI safety evidence (including Teleo's documented failure mode research) could submit. The inquiry's findings will likely shape NHS policy for 2027-2030.

## Curator Notes
PRIMARY CONNECTION: Clinical AI failure mode papers (Sessions 7-9); EU AI Act rollback; FDA deregulation — all confirm same pattern
WHY ARCHIVED: Lords inquiry represents the UK's most visible current policy moment for clinical AI. Its adoption framing (not safety framing) is the key finding.
EXTRACTION HINT: The convergence of Lords inquiry (adoption focus), EU AI Act rollback, and FDA enforcement discretion expansion all occurred in the same 90-day window. This pattern deserves a dedicated claim: "All three major clinical AI regulatory tracks (UK, EU, US) simultaneously shifted toward adoption acceleration rather than safety evaluation in Q1 2026."
