24th August 2026
The impact of AI on health and care is already being felt. From supporting diagnosis to helping services manage growing demand, AI could transform health and care as we recognise it. But it also raises significant questions.
Many express concerns about the impact that AI has on trust, fairness and transparency.
As an evidence-based guidance producer for more than 25 years, the moment is right for NICE to listen to the public’s views on AI.
That is the purpose of NICE Listens – our deliberative public engagement programme, designed to explore the moral, social and ethical questions that sit behind complex decisions. When NICE considers difficult issues, NICE Listens helps ensure our work is informed not only by rigorous evidence and economic analysis, but also by the values of the society we serve.
This piece explores how NICE Listens shapes our approach and why AI will be the focus of our next conversation.
What NICE Listens does
NICE is known for the robust methods behind its guidance. Independent committees consider the evidence to make recommendations that are fair, objective and evidence-based. But many of the questions NICE faces also involve social value judgements: what matters most to people, which trade-offs are acceptable, and how to apply fairness in practice.
NICE Listens complements our existing decision-making processes by bringing societal values into these conversations.
During each public dialogue, participants learn about a topic in depth. They interact with expert stakeholders with differing views on the topic, deliberate together, and develop recommendations for NICE. We work with specialist external contractors to run each dialogue, so that the process remains as independent as possible.
Why AI is the next conversation
AI is becoming more prominent across health and care, with potential to support diagnosis, improve productivity and help services respond to growing pressure. NICE is already evaluating AI-enabled technologies, including software to support stroke diagnosis, and AI-assisted echocardiography for heart failure.
We have published a plan on how we will enable the safe and effective adoption of AI, and we are developing a best practice methods framework for the use of AI in evidence generation, synthesis and review. But this is only part of the picture. AI also raises wider questions about trust, transparency, accountability and fairness – especially when it influences decisions that affect people’s health and care.
Research commissioned by the NHS AI Lab found that people perceived several benefits of using AI in healthcare. These include increased precision, reliability, cost effectiveness, and time saved.
However, participants raised concerns about data bias and security. They also commented on the involvement of commercial organisations in these activities and stressed the importance of human involvement and connection.
That is why AI is the right next topic for NICE Listens. The dialogue will explore how people want AI to be used in health and social care, what part it should play in NICE’s work, the principles they expect NICE to follow, and how views develop when people have time to reflect on the issues.
This matters because AI is not just another technical innovation: it challenges institutions to show that decisions are understandable, trustworthy and aligned with public expectations. NICE Listens exists precisely to help NICE understand those expectations on complex moral, ethical and social value questions.
We’ll use the NICE Listens dialogue to shape our approach to AI effectively and at an early stage. The dialogue will help inform how we communicate about AI-related guidance, how we think about evidence and value, and how we build confidence in decisions that may increasingly involve AI-enabled technologies.
Most importantly, it will help ensure that NICE’s future approach reflects not only what AI can do, but what the public believes it should do.
Listening before deciding
The government has set an aspiration for the NHS to be the most AI-enabled care system in the world. As the use and impacts of AI on health and care grow, public dialogue will be essential. NICE Listens offers a way to hear from people in depth on issues that cannot be answered by quantitative data alone, helping NICE make decisions that are not only evidence based, but also publicly credible.
Find out more about NICE Listens