By Denis Campbell
Publication Date: 2026-06-09 08:00:00
Doctors and the NHS could be sued for medical negligence over mistakes made by artificial intelligence tools used to diagnose patients and suggest treatment, ministers have warned.
Under current law, medical and healthcare professionals can be held liable for causing patients to suffer harm or death, even if it was the AI that made the mistakes that led to their suffering.
The Medical Protection Society, which represents doctors accused of misconduct, said in a report that unless the law is revised, doctors could become a “liability sink” – the target of clinical negligence lawsuits – for AI errors.
The NHS is using AI for an increasing number of purposes, including analyzing scans and X-rays, producing summaries of doctors’ meetings with patients and writing letters to patients.
“The law has always struggled to keep up with technological change. But with AI, the pace of change is so rapid that this gap feels less like a step and more like an ever-widening gap”…
