From your unique vantage points – diagnostics, clinical documentation and drug manufacturing – what is the biggest hurdle your sector has cleared to make AI a reality for patients today?
Dr Tuckey: The biggest hurdle hasn’ t been the technology- it’ s been changing how healthcare operates around it. The AI models and engineering capabilities already exist. The real challenge has been building teams who can look at entrenched clinical workflows and ask‘ How do we actually fix this?’ – not just layer tech on top of the same broken process. That’ s not happening at scale in NHS trusts or large legacy healthcare providers today. For Scan. com, that means clinicians and product teams working closely together to solve practical problems across the entire imaging pathway. One example is our use of AI to review radiology reports for high-risk keywords and urgent findings. Radiologists are working under immense pressure, and AI can provide an additional layer of support by helping surface cases that may need faster attention. It’ s not about replacing clinical judgement – it’ s about reinforcing it. We’ ve already identified more than 20 cases where that second check mattered.
Dr Baker: Regulation is a hurdle, but it’ s the hurdle we want to be facing and one we’ re proud to lead on overcoming.
There can’ t be shortcuts, particularly in healthcare. We are focused on how to build clinically safe AI systems and enable monitoring post-deployment in this new technological era. Patient trust is next, and it still has to be earned every day. Patients are reporting more human care when having Tandem present, which shows that AI is a reality for patients already.
Dr King: The biggest hurdle has been proving that these technologies can move beyond the lab and deliver tangible benefits in the real world. Healthcare doesn’ t adopt innovation simply because it’ s novel; it adopts innovation when it improves outcomes. We’ re now reaching an inflexion point where technologies that once felt experimental are solving genuine clinical challenges at scale. At BioOrbit, we’ ve demonstrated that we can manufacture drugs in microgravity at an industrial scale, potentially transforming how some of the world’ s most important medicines for cancer treatment are delivered. The broader lesson is that breakthrough technology becomes a reality when it solves a problem patients and healthcare systems have struggled with for decades.
48 August 2026