Recently, a clip of Tony Blair on Question Time in 2005 came up on my twitter feed. In it, an audience member quizzes Blair on a Government policy that only allowed people to book GP appointments 48 hours in advance. “Now you can’t get it at all unless it is within the 48 hours!” exclaimed the outraged member; I wonder how she feels today? 

The NHS is a fundamental part of British society. It is trusted by 71% of the population – higher than the BBC, the Bank of England, the ONS and Ofcom. Despite the positive feeling the institution holds among voters, the NHS is under severe pressure right across the board. Hospitals are full, clinical and managerial staff are overworked, and there are too few GPs. 

Like so many other areas of modern life, AI could help to make that first step into addressing the administrative issues that the NHS currently is facing. Generative AI tools, such as speech-to-text dictation technologies, should be part of what a likely in-coming Labour government looks towards.

In a recent Public First poll, voters were asked which issues the UK faces today that politicians should be doing more on – NHS waiting lists ranked the highest. Reducing energy bills, the level of immigration and increasing economic growth all garnered less support. 

Tackling NHS waiting lists was overwhelmingly the largest issue for older voters (65+), being included in over three quarters of responses. Although NHS waiting lists are seen as the most pressing issue by all age groups, the difference between that and other issues, such as house prices and energy bills, decrease as respondents get younger.

Regardless of background, people are extremely concerned with the state of the NHS. An in-coming Labour government may look to revolutionise the provision of healthcare to support its promised ‘Fit For the Future’ NHS. Karin Smyth, the shadow Minister for Health, has suggested Labour’s approach will be to “embrace new technology” in order to deliver a better service. 

But the ambiguity of this message may cause concerns from the public as to what this means in practice. 

For some, this could be new technologies being incorporated to address the administrative issue that the NHS faces. For others, it could be the death of the doctor-patient relationship. 

Previous Public First polling has shown that generally people feel confident that they can explain what AI is across all age brackets, although the degree of confidence to which people feel they can explain AI does reduce with age (although older voters often feel better informed on politics and current affairs, so this lack of confidence on AI might be relative). Unsurprisingly, the inverse is seen in “I have heard of this, but would not be able to explain it” responses.

However, while respondents may have confidence that they can describe what AI is, when they are offered examples of technology and asked to categorise it as either AI or not AI, there are much starker differences. 

Public First’s recent polling found that AI technologies were identified correctly fairly consistently. A chatbot that can answer any questions (85%), self driving cars (78%), virtual assistant such as Google Home (69%), face recognition technology (66%) and an automatic idea generating pen (63%) ranked as options with the largest proportion of ‘this is AI’ responses – all correctly. Other forms of AI, such as smartphone predictive text, speech-to-text technology and auto reply brain chips, had less than half of respondents correctly categorising them as AI – large proportions (around 20-30%) also responded that they didn’t know. 

The extent to which the chatbot and self-driving car were identified as AI is telling. It suggests that people may have a perception that AI is characterised by the potential to be a human replacement and should have a physical element; the AI taking over from the other person in the conversation (in the case of the chatbot or google home), the driver in your car or at the desk of border control.

While this is sometimes the case, AI is also used in far less stereotypically ‘high-tech’ ways (which people are not able to recognise as widely) – such as in smartphone predictive texts and speech-to-text technologies. 

All of the above technologies are AI. The four highest ranking of these technologies have clear physical use cases and can act as a replacement to a physical person. The lowest ranking (albeit still all correctly classed as AI by almost half of respondents) lack that physical element. This could suggest there is a mismatch between public perception and what the use cases for AI actually can be.

Therefore, there is an opportunity for Labour to expand on the technology that lies in that gap to tackle the waiting lists without introducing AI technology that voters feel less comfortable with.

Public First polled attitudes towards AI specifically in the context of healthcare. 61% of people support a greater use of AI in healthcare, 63% agreed that “adopting AI tools in the NHS would improve the quality of health services”, and 65% agreed that “adopting AI tools can help GP’s to become more efficient in their day-to-day jobs”. 

Although we found that, overall, men were around 10 percentage points more likely than women to support AI use, these figures remained relatively consistent among different age groups and this could be looked at in two ways. One, is that there is consensus among voters that the NHS has lagged behind and any sort of development to improve the way it is being run will be positively received. The second, is that there is genuine desire for AI to be implemented into the NHS for its perceived benefits. 

Respondents to the Public First poll were offered scenarios for the use of technology in healthcare scenarios (including the use of AI).  The most popular of these were remote monitoring devices (such as CGM arm devices) and online access to medical records, test results and treatment plans, receiving 65% and 64% support respectively. 

The use of technology in administrative tasks polled higher than the use of AI in more patient-facing scenarios and, overall, respondents were less enthusiastic when offered AI in a healthcare setting compared to its overall use in healthcare systems. 

One example that encapsulates the public’s sentiment towards this could be using AI to help write doctors notes through dictation.

The adoption of an ambient AI technology which will allow for a conversation between a GP and their patient to be transcripted, understood and condensed into short form notes, compliant with EHR, automatically by AI. This could significantly reduce the administrative burden on overworked GP’s, freeing up their time to care for patients.

In effect, what this would look like is a small microphone in the GP’s room which uses an AI to listen to the dialogue, create a transcript, and condense it down into notes for the doctor automatically. This is clearly already being considered by the Conservatives; this exact technology is spoken about by the Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden in an interview with Times Radio.

Largely, people are supportive of AI playing a greater role in healthcare practices – 65% of people think that they would make them more efficient in their day-to-day jobs. Again, there was support across age groups, with 64% of 55-64 years old and 58% of 65+ agreeing that AI tools would make GP’s more efficient. 

While the polls show that using AI in a low-key way – not replacing doctors and nurses and not undermining the clinician/patient relationship – could be popular, we need to put all this into political perspective. Although political parties have recognised that implementing AI in healthcare practices can alleviate the pressure on GP’s and NHS workers, it won’t be a clear vote winner. It is obviously much less of a priority than, say, reducing wait times for GP appointments and routine hospital appointments. 

But there is a mutual recognition among voters that change is needed – and AI could certainly help drive a narrative of change (while actually delivering change on the ground). While  political parties need to be wary of vague promises about what it means to “embrace new technology”, the promise of making the NHS more efficient by using AI to improve the administrative side of the service is positively looked upon by voters.  

Labour should focus on making that differentiation. It won’t be a vote winner, but reflecting what the reality of “embracing new technology” is will pave the way for the improvements that the NHS so desperately requires. Ambiguously leaving the door open for these “new technologies” will only hinder the path to progress.

Polling Tables

Public First asked these questions in our monthly omnibus, which ran from 23rd February to 27th February 2024. We spoke to 2,012 respondents in an anonymous, online survey. All results are weighted using Iterative Proportional Fitting, or ‘Raking’. The results are weighted by interlocking age & gender, region and social grade to Nationally Representative Proportions.

Public First is a member of the British Polling Council (BPC) and abides by its rules. For more information, please contact the Public First polling team: polling@publicfirst.co.uk.

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