Event round-up: Health Foundation Survey on Attitudes to Technology and AI in Health Care
On 11 May 2026, techUK hosted an industry briefing delivered by the Health Foundation in collaboration with techUK, exploring public and NHS staff attitudes towards technology, AI and electronic patient records (EPRs) in health care. The session was led by Ahmed Bin Ismail, Senior Policy Analyst at the Health Foundation, and Alex Lawrence, a Fellow at the Foundation.
The briefing drew on the Foundation's third consecutive annual survey on attitudes to technology and AI in health care, fielded between July and October 2025. It surveyed 8,000 members of the UK public (aged 16+) and just over 2,000 NHS staff, was nationally representative across age, gender, ethnicity, region and socioeconomic group, and included 240 adults at risk of digital exclusion.
Access the slides and recording
The full slides and session recording are available below. The Health Foundation's complete publications can be found on its website.
Key takeaways
The public and NHS staff are living in different worlds on AI. Only 38% of the public think AI will improve the quality of care, against 57% of NHS staff.
NHS confidence is wobbling. In a single year, the share of staff who think technology will make care worse more than tripled, from 6% in 2024 to 19% in 2025.
Optimism about AI is becoming a class divide. Around 70% of the most affluent group think AI will improve care, versus just over 20% of the least affluent, and the modest national rise in optimism (33% to 38%) was driven almost entirely by higher-income groups.
The public will accept AI, as long as a human is watching. Comfort with AI is net positive when a human checks the decision and flips net negative when that check is removed; on the "doctor in your pocket" question, over 70% would use the NHS app to book appointments but only 49% are comfortable getting AI health advice for non-urgent problems, with nearly one in three actively against it.
Given a choice, the public pick safety over speed every time. 71% want strict AI rules even if that deters UK development, 72% would wait for stronger evidence before adopting new tools, and 70% want a human to check AI results even if it means waiting longer.
