Hutan Ashrafian: ‘HealthTech is a game-changing opportunity for mankind’

Clinician-scientist, surgeon, and entrepreneur, Professor Hutan Ashrafian’s track record in translating novel technologies to healthcare includes developing an algorithm with Google to detect breast cancer and leading its translation into clinical practice.  

Ranked in the top 1% of scientists worldwide (based on citations), Ashrafian says that he is immune to the “sci-fi cool” of AI and committed to making digital tools deliver benefits in real life.

As chief medical officer at biotech firm Harbinger Health, he is working to use advances in AI to test for cancers in their pre-disease state, before they are visible or symptomatic.

Ahead of his keynote at Digital Health Rewired 2026, Ashrafian tells Digital Health News why true digital transformation is about keeping people healthy for as long as possible.

As a scientist and an entrepreneur, how do you rate the NHS’s chances of becoming a global leader in health technology?

It’s a game-changing opportunity for mankind and the UK is at the potential epicentre. The capability of this country and its students, who are graduating from the big universities, is something everyone in the world is looking at. It would be a major own goal if we weren’t to rationalise our capabilities and expand in this space.

The NHS is the jewel in the crown. There’s a vast set of data that can be used for the next generation of digital trials and therapeutic discovery diagnostics.

We can do this, but there needs to be a more cohesive momentum. It behoves us for UK society – actually, for global society – to make this happen.

What is your opinion on the ambition in the 10 year health plan to transform the NHS via a shift from ‘analogue to digital’?

The concept is absolutely spot on; the nature of implementation is the big question.

I’ve introduced an algorithm into the NHS [developed with Google to detect breast cancer in mammograms] which analysis showed was very capable.

The big change was the hoops that then had to be gone through for there to be buy-in from colleagues and then implementing it with sign-off. The algorithmic mathematics happened in a much shorter period of time.

There are more than enough good deep learning algorithms and they will get better. The real questions for the 10 year health plan, and for people like me trying to push through real solutions, are ‘what are the digital needs of the health system?’.

There needs to be an accessible set of tools. They need to be implemented in real life – in clinical pathways but also, importantly, in homes, schools and gyms; that’s where the future wave of health is going to be.

Secondly, all these digital tools will have behaviour right at the centre of them. Engagement and retention are a major challenge, with so many users abandoning or deleting apps.

We need to make sure as a health service that we have engagement from the most important people, the patients, but also from the health staff supporting those digital solutions.

We also need to recognise that the cycle of innovation is fast. Innovations are coming up and being updated constantly, at a pace that is in the order of months, weeks, days and hours. That cycle needs to be accommodated.

How can the NHS unlock AI’s potential?

It’s not just about saying ‘here’s a fancy algorithm, just make it happen’. The implementation story is the coalface – it’s hard and sometimes laborious.

The cool bit of AI, which everyone likes to talk about, is almost sci-fi. The reality is about understanding audits, post market surveillance, the infrastructure and the API [Application Planning Interface].

It’s important to understand the true complexity of the NHS. There are just under 100,000 unique data flows between digital entries within the NHS and it is running on a background of around 60 million individuals, with maybe 500 organisations consuming this data. We’re almost talking about the geography of a nation state.

Yes, we’ll connect road A to road B, but there is countryside, there are houses, there are different geographies. One has to acknowledge that complexity and then we can say ‘right, this is how we’re going to manage tha’.  We have to build roads that can accommodate mountains and streams.

I’d also say that evidence generation needs to be overhauled for the digital space. The paradigm of drug trials, with the classical randomised controlled drug trial being at the top of a hierarchy of evidence, does not necessarily equate to digital’s fast time cycles.

Everyone on the same journey is now asking what are the right standards to appraise this new technology? What are the red lines in terms of safety? What are the equity solutions that need to be built in as we move forward?

Adoption comes organically. The big driver of innovation is the patients themselves. They will tell you ‘I know this is being used, I’ve seen a documentary, I’ve read about it, how come you don’t have it?’.

How can we address implementation challenges?

Policy makers, clinicians and patients are switched onto the benefits of digital – we don’t need to be convincing people anymore. However, we still need to be totally transparent about choices and opt-out.

The technical issues of having legacy systems need to be overcome.

The NHS was designed to be federated, and that functionality and local efficiency needs to stay. But there are tonnes of digital solutions that allow interoperability in digital solution integration and not a one-size-fits-all approach.

Lastly, we need to be clear on accountability and governance: who is the data controller and what does that mean?

Someone can have a full blood count done in hospital A and they can’t act on it at hospital B for technical, legal or logistic reason. That duplication needs to go.

Can you give us a taster of what you’ll be talking about at Rewired 2026?

I’ll have three major messages. Firstly, implementation is key.

Secondly, you need to listen to the patient at all times, because they are the ‘north star’.

And finally, we need to move to a place which is pre-emptive, where individuals are looked at in their lifestyles and ecosystems when they’re healthy so we can optimise longitudinal benefits rather than replacing broken systems.

Ashrafian will deliver a keynote at Digital Health Rewired, which is taking place on 24-25 March 2026 at The NEC in Birmingham. Register here

Rewired 2026’s headline sponsors are The Access Group and Optum, who will also sponsor the Integrated Care and Digital Transformation stages respectively.