NPIC Launches First Public Exhibit

This month the National Pathology Imaging Co-operative saw the launch of our very first public exhibition ‘Digitising Disease: Artificial intelligence under the microscope’.

This exhibition forms part of our ongoing public and patient involvement initiative here at NPIC and is currently being displayed at the Oxford public library as part of the Oxford Festival of Ideas.

NPIC aims to better understand and appreciate the issues and concerns of all our communities. Our goal is to enable a more inclusive and informed approach that safeguards people’s rights, minimises bias, and ensures services provided by the NHS are widely and equally effective and accessible.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is playing an increasingly important role in the way diseases are diagnosed. This piece poses the questions: what, exactly, is meant by AI, and what do patients need to know about its use in healthcare? This exhibition is designed for the public by the public. The NPIC Public and Patient Advisory Group helped to shape this exhibition from its foundation. The group was pivotal in articulating the questions which the wider public may have. They also provided vital feedback on the accessibility of the wording.

Francis McKay, author of the exhibition said: “After a lot of hard work I am really excited to see this exhibition make its debut. The exhibition attempts to communicate the complexities of AI as it is used for diagnosing disease. AI will be used increasingly in healthcare and so I think that it is really important that patients and the public understand it, along with its risks and benefits.”

If you wish to visit the exhibition you can do so at Oxfordshire County Library, Queen Street, Westgate, Oxford, OX1 1DJ.

You can also view this exhibition online at https://www.digitisingdisease.com/

Please follow us on Twitter @NPICDigital to stay abreast of all NPIC updates, including further dates and locations for the exhibition.

Acknowledgements:

This exhibition was generously supported by National Pathology Imaging Co-operative and the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities at the University of Oxford.

The National Pathology Imagining Cooperative (NPIC) is a consortium of academic, industry and NHS partners who are digitalizing pathology services across the UK in order to build a system for driving artificial intelligence research in the future.

The ‘National Pathology Imaging Co-operative, NPIC (Project no. 104687) is supported by a £50m investment from the Data to Early Diagnosis and Precision Medicine challenge, managed and delivered by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)

The Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities is supported by funding from the Wellcome Trust (Grant no 203132).

Contributors:

The exhibition was co-curated by: Francis McKay, Nina Hallowell, Milly Farrell, Nick Pitt, Bethany Williams, Graham Prestwich, Eloise Pearson, Alex Wright, Darren Treanor, Derek Magee, and the members of NPIC’s Patient and Public Advisory Group. Additional advice was provided by Kelly Richards (Oxford University Museum of Natural History) and Michael Fulton (Leeds Teaching Hospital Trust). Panels were designed by Francis McKay and Gemma Hattersley.