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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: EP/Y028856/1
Title: CHAI - EPSRC AI Hub for Causality in Healthcare AI with Real Data
Principal Investigator: Tsaftaris, Professor S
Other Investigators:
Seth, Dr S Guttinger, Dr S Khamseh, Dr A
Russell, Professor G Gouk, Dr H Alexander, Professor D
Baillie, Professor J Harrison, Professor EM Leonelli, Professor S
Nazarpour, Professor K Sperrin, Dr M Guthrie, Professor B
Chockler, Dr H Grigoriadis, Dr A Tempini, Dr N
Vasquez Osorio, Dr E M Crowley, Dr E J Beentjes, Dr SV
Li, Dr Y Simpson, Professor I Diaz-Ordaz, Dr K
Escudero Rodriguez, Dr J Whiteley, Professor W Ramamoorthy, Professor S
He, Professor Y Silva, Professor RBd Glocker, Professor B
Peek, Professor N Guo, Dr H
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Amazon Web Services (Not UK) ARCHIMEDES Bering Limited
British Standards Institution BSI Cancer Research UK Canon Medical Research Europe Ltd
CausaLens Chief Scientist Office (CSO), Scotland Data Science for Health Equity
Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre ELLIS Endeavour Health Charitable Trust
Evergreen Life Gendius Limited Health Data Research UK (HDR UK)
Healthcare Improvement Scotland Huawei Group Hurdle
Indiana University Institute of Cancer Research Kheiron Medical Technologies
Life Sciences Scotland Manchester Cancer Research Centre MathWorks
Mayo Clinic and Foundation (Rochester) McGill University Meta (Previously Facebook)
Microsoft Nat Inst for Health & Care Excel (NICE) NHS
NHS National Services Scotland PrecisionLife Ltd Queen Mary University of London
Research Data Scotland Samsung AI Centre (SAIC) Scotland 5G Centre
Scottish AI Alliance Scottish Ambulance Service Sibel Health
Spectra Analytics The Data Lab UCB
Univ Coll London Hospital (replace) University of California Berkeley University of Dundee
University of Edinburgh Willows Health Zeit Medical
Department: Sch of Engineering
Organisation: University of Edinburgh
Scheme: Standard Research
Starts: 01 February 2024 Ends: 31 January 2029 Value (£): 10,288,789
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Artificial Intelligence
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
Information Technologies
Related Grants:
Panel History:
Panel DatePanel NameOutcome
08 Nov 2023 AI for Science or Real Data Interview Panel B Announced
Summary on Grant Application Form
The current AI paradigm at best reveals correlations between model input and output variables. This falls short of addressing health and healthcare challenges where knowing the causal relationship between interventions and outcomes is necessary and desirable. In addition, biases and vulnerability in AI systems arise, as models may pick up unwanted, spurious correlations from historic data, resulting in the widening of already existing health inequalities.

Causal AI is the key to unlock robust, responsible and trustworthy AI and transform challenging tasks such as early prediction, diagnosis and prevention of disease.

The Causality in Healthcare AI with Real Data (CHAI) Hub will bring together academia, industry, healthcare, and policy stakeholders to co-create the next-generation of world-leading artificial intelligence solutions that can predict outcomes of interventions and help choose personalised treatments, thus transforming health and healthcare. The CHAI Hub will develop novel methods to identify and account for causal relationships in complex data. The Hub will be built by the community for the community, amassing experts and stakeholders from across the UK to

1) push the boundaries of AI innovation;

2) develop cutting-edge solutions that drive desperately needed efficiency in resource-constrained healthcare systems; and

3) cement the UK's standing as a next-gen AI superpower.

The data complexity in heterogeneous and distributed environments such as healthcare exacerbates the risks of bias and vulnerability and introduces additional challenges that must be addressed. Modern clinical investigations need to mix structured and unstructured data sources (e.g. patient health records, and medical imaging exams) which current AI cannot integrate effectively. These gaps in current AI technology must be addressed in order to develop algorithms that can help to better understand disease mechanisms, predict outcomes and estimate the effects of treatments. This is important if we want to ensure the safe and responsible use of AI in personalised decision making.

Causal AI has the potential to unearth novel insights from observational data, formalise treatment effects, assess outcome likelihood, and estimate 'what-if' scenarios. Incorporating causal principles is critical for delivering on the National AI Strategy to ensure that AI is technically and clinically safe, transparent, fair and explainable.

The CHAI Hub will be formed by a founding consortium of powerhouses in AI, healthcare, and data science throughout the UK in a hub-spoke model with geographic reach and diversity. The hub will be based in Edinburgh's Bayes Centre (leveraging world-class expertise in AI, data-driven innovation in health applications, a robust health data ecosystem, entrepreneurship, and translation). Regional spokes will be in Manchester (expertise in both methods and translation of AI through the Institute for Data Science and AI, and Pankhurst Institute), London (hosted at KCL, representing also UCL and Imperial, leveraging London's rapidly growing AI ecosystem) and Exeter (leveraging strengths in philosophy of causal inference and ethics of AI).

The hub will develop a UK-wide multidisciplinary network for causal AI. Through extended collaborations with industry, policymakers and other stakeholders, we will expand the hub to deliver next-gen causal AI where it is needed most. We will work together to co-create, moving beyond co-ideation and co-design, to co-implementation, and co-evaluation where appropriate to ensure fit-for-purpose solutions

Our programme will be flexible, will embed trusted, responsible innovation and environmental sustainability considerations, will ensure that equality diversity and inclusion principles are reflected through all activities, and will ensure that knowledge generated through CHAI will continue to have real-world impact beyond the initial 60 months.
Key Findings
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Potential use in non-academic contexts
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