Manchester NHS to become testing ground for new AI healthcare technology

New artificial intelligence healthcare technology will be tested with patients and clinicians in real NHS settings under a new partnership between Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust and the UK’s medicines and medical devices regulator.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) have launched the Manchester Sandbox, a programme designed to test emerging healthcare technologies under regulatory oversight before potentially supporting their wider use across the NHS.

Rather than assessing new technology solely in controlled development environments, the programme will allow selected products to be deployed within NHS services so researchers, clinicians and regulators can examine how they perform during everyday healthcare.

The first technologies are expected to include AI-enabled medical devices capable of identifying patients who may be at greater risk of developing complications from long-term health conditions. The aim is to determine whether such tools can help healthcare teams intervene earlier while establishing evidence around their safety and effectiveness.

The programme could also help answer questions that become apparent only when technology moves from development into clinical practice, including how healthcare professionals interact with it, how it fits into existing services and whether its benefits can be reproduced outside an initial trial.

Evidence gathered in Manchester will be shared more widely and could influence how successful technologies are introduced elsewhere in the NHS.

The initiative comes as artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly embedded within healthcare. AI is already being used or tested across the NHS for areas including medical imaging, clinical documentation, patient triage and identifying people at risk of deteriorating health.

Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust is itself expanding the use of AI-powered ambient voice technology, which can listen to clinical consultations and automatically produce transcripts and clinical summaries, following earlier trials.

The new sandbox will focus on creating a clearer pathway between developing promising technology and establishing whether it is ready for broader clinical use.

For developers, working alongside the regulator and NHS teams could provide earlier clarity about the evidence required to demonstrate that a product is safe and effective. For the NHS, the programme is intended to provide better real-world evidence when deciding whether a technology should be adopted more widely.

The MHRA has previously established its AI Airlock regulatory sandbox, which was launched in 2024 to explore regulatory challenges surrounding artificial intelligence used as a medical device. Two phases have since involved 11 innovators working across seven regulatory challenges.

The Manchester programme takes the sandbox approach directly into an NHS environment, allowing technologies to be examined as part of real healthcare delivery.

Health Innovation Minister James Frith said the programme could help get effective technology to patients more quickly while ensuring innovation does not come at the expense of safety.

MHRA chief executive Lawrence Tallon said AI and emerging technologies had significant potential to improve care, but understanding how they perform in practice would be critical to determining where they could make the greatest difference.

MFT chief executive Mark Cubbon said patients should be able to benefit from innovation quickly without having to choose between access and safety, with the partnership bringing healthcare providers, regulators and innovators together earlier in the development process.

Manchester has become an increasingly important centre for health technology and AI research, combining one of the country’s largest NHS trusts with universities, research organisations and a growing technology sector.

The MHRA and MFT plan to hold a roundtable later this year involving healthcare providers, researchers, technology developers and patient representatives to help determine which projects should be considered next.

The regulator will also invite expressions of interest from medical device developers wanting to participate in the next stage of the programme.

If the approach proves successful, its importance could extend beyond Manchester. Evidence generated through the programme could help shape how new healthcare technology is evaluated and introduced across the NHS, potentially providing a route for promising innovations to move from development into everyday patient care more quickly.

For a health service investing heavily in artificial intelligence, the challenge is no longer simply finding new technology. It is establishing which tools genuinely improve care, which can operate safely in busy healthcare environments and which are worth adopting at scale.

Manchester will now become one of the places where those questions are put to the test.

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