Health & Wellbeing

Cohort 1

Cohort 2

Cohort 3

How we live well.

The Health and Wellbeing theme invites you to tackle a critical challenge at the intersection of technical capability and human meaning: how can artificial intelligence genuinely serve patients, carers, communities, and healthcare professionals whilst respecting the interpretive complexity of health and illness?

Healthcare represents a quintessential example of AI’s “qualitative turn”, where success demands more than technical performance. Health and illness are experienced through rich, sensory, emotional narratives that resist reduction to data points. Your research could explore how to preserve this interpretive depth whilst leveraging AI’s capabilities, moving beyond narrow operational metrics towards systems that engage meaningfully with cultural complexity, embodied experience, and multiple valid perspectives on wellbeing.

This theme responds to urgent risks identified in current AI development: the homogenisation problem, where dominant architectures risk entrenching health inequalities by reinforcing narrow models of health and healing; the transformation of human cognition, where AI might diminish rather than enhance clinical judgment and patient agency; and the implementation gap, where 90% of health AI remains stuck in pilots partly because systems fail to engage with contextual realities.

Your doctoral research could explore interpretive AI approaches that represent diverse perspectives on health rather than monolithic outputs, human-AI ensemble methods that enhance collaborative intelligence between patients, clinicians, and AI systems, or alternative evaluation frameworks that assess cultural sensitivity and contextual appropriateness alongside technical accuracy. You might propose novel approaches to participatory health AI design, examining how communities can shape systems from ideation through deployment, or investigate how to bridge global health models with local, cultural, and political specificities that shape real implementation.

Place-based and Regional Context

The North East offers exceptional opportunities for your citizen-centred health AI research, combining significant healthcare challenges with innovative partners and diverse communities. The region faces higher-than-average chronic disease rates, substantial socioeconomic deprivation, and significant health inequalities (life expectancy gaps between most and least deprived areas exceed ten years). The ageing population creates both challenges and opportunities for research on AI supporting active ageing.

NHS North East and North Cumbria serves 3.2 million people, actively pursuing digital transformation and AI adoption. Academic Health Science Network NE&NC accelerates innovation adoption with focus on health inequalities. Regional partners include Sunderland Software City, Innovation SuperNetwork, and diverse communities in former mining areas, coastal towns, and urban centres. This combination makes the Northeast ideal for your research investigating whether health AI reduces or amplifies inequalities, enabling you to generate locally relevant and nationally applicable insights through your doctoral work.

Relevant Partner Organisations

Students on this theme will have opportunities to work with partners spanning healthcare, government, technology, and community sectors. NHS North East and North Cumbria and Academic Health Science Network NE&NC can provide implementation contexts and clinical partnerships. Cabinet Office, DSIT, and UK Health Security Agency offer pathways to policy influence. Technology partners include Google, Nokia Bell Labs, Thoughtworks, and Yoti. Community connections through VONNE, Trussell Trust, and Newcastle City Council enable citizen voices to shape your research. NHS Business Services Authority offers large-scale data infrastructure research opportunities, while academic partners (City University of London, UBC, UCD) enable collaborative projects addressing implementation, equity, and governance challenges.

The Psychology and Communication Technology Lab (PaCT Lab, www.pactlab.co.uk) specialises in health technology research including, but not limited to, remote healthcare technologies for eating disorders (see RHED: Research in Health Technologies for Eating Distress Research Group, www.rhhed-research.uk) and stigmatised conditions. PaCT Lab is led by CCAI Co-I, Dr Dawn Branley-Bell.

Cabinet Office City St George's, University of London Department for Science, Innovation and Technology Google Health Innovation North East and North Cumbria Newcastle City Council NHS Business Services Authority NHS North East and North Cumbria Nokia Bell Labs Thoughtworks Trussell Trust UK Health Security Agency University College Dublin University of British Columbia VONNE Yoti