Alastair Denniston is Co-Director of HDR UK Midlands and Consultant Ophthalmologist and Honorary Professor in AI and Digital Health Technologies at University Hospitals Birmingham and University of Birmingham. With Dr Xiaoxuan Liu, Alastair leads the Birmingham AI & Digital Health Group, a research and policy group focused on responsible innovation of AI health technologies. The group’s work seeks to ensure AI technologies are safe, effective and equitable, and benefits patients and society. The group’s work includes:

  • Improving scientific standards – developing internationally adopted reporting guidelines for clinical trials of AI health technologies: SPIRIT-AI and CONSORT-AI; and contributing to other AI reporting standards including TRIPOD+AI, STARD-AI, and DECIDE-AI.
  • Improving evidence – building evidence standards for digital health technologies for NICE (DHTESF), in collaboration with Imperial College London and the Alan Turing Institute.
  • Improving safety – developing tools for assessing safety of AI-enabled medical devices: the medical algorithmic audit, and through working directly with medical device regulators such as the MHRA.
  • Improving diversity and representation within the data used in AI – tackling bias in health datasets to mitigate AI-driven health inequalities through STANDING Together.

The group works in collaboration with academic, industry and policy institutions around the world, bringing diverse and interdisciplinary teams together to build best practices that can be translated internationally.