The Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) continues to prioritize artificial intelligence (AI) and has assembled a group of clinical radiologists and clinical oncologists with expertise in AI.
The group will be submitting a response to the Topol review, which is seeking evidence on the current use of genomics, digital medicine, and AI/machine learning across the National Health Service (NHS). The college is asking members to complete a short poll to reflect the views of its membership.
The RCR is working under general principles that AI adoption in the NHS should do the following:
- Work to common standards that facilitate universal applicability, including extant standards for clinical practice as set out by the RCR and other stakeholders, including the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).
- Assure quality, safety, and security of data used.
- Take account of current and emerging regulation by healthcare and digital economy regulators.
- Be clinically led so that effort is directed where it can most readily be used in practice to relieve hard-pressed NHS services.
- Achieve the widest possible use of digital data for the benefit of U.K. patients and the population as a whole.
![A normal mammogram confirmed by three-year radiologic follow-up illustrates reader-marked regions of interest (ROIs) during (A) unaided (round 1) and (B) artificial intelligence (AI)–assisted (round 2) reading. Each colored dot represents an ROI for recall by a human reader. Readers could mark more than one ROI per case, represented by multiple dots of the same color. During AI-assisted reading, the AI system displayed three visible prompts: two with suspicion of malignancy scores of 35% (left mediolateral oblique [L MLO] and craniocaudal [L CC]) and one with a suspicion of malignancy score of 10% (right craniocaudal [R CC]), shown as polygonal overlays. Without AI, six of 10 readers (60%) marked a false-positive ROI. With AI assistance, this fell to two of 10 (20%). R MLO = right mediolateral oblique.](https://img.auntminnieeurope.com/mindful/smg/workspaces/default/uploads/2026/07/2026-07-14-radiology-mammogram-ai-auto-bias.H0bYO8QlWs.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&dpr=2&fit=crop&h=167&q=70&w=250)
