News New national Agentic AI initiative launched for health and care 10 December 2025 Share Share on Linkedin Share on X Share via email News Digital, Data & AI National Health and care professionalsInnovator hubLife sciences and industry Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex (Health Innovation KSS) has partnered with the University of Cambridge’s Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence Lab, the Responsible AI Institute and The King’s Fund to launch TrustX Health – a pioneering initiative to verify, deploy and test Agentic AI safely across health and care settings. Agentic AI refers to autonomous systems that can achieve specific goals with limited supervision. These technologies have the potential to transform the NHS and social care – from supporting diagnosis and automating admin tasks to predicting service demand and enabling voice-assisted workflows. However, they also pose risks, such as bias, misinformation, and change over time. These risks are amplified in high-stakes environments such as health and care. TrustX addresses these challenges with an NHS-embedded approach, creating the governance and technical foundations for large-scale adoption. The initiative also supports the ambitions of the NHS 2025 Fit for the Future 10 Year Health Plan, which calls for digital transformation and safe AI deployment. By combining scientific rigour with practical evaluation, TrustX aims to set a global benchmark for responsible AI in health and care. The aspiration for TrustX is to inform and support the development of a shared ecosystem for safe experimentation, rapid learning, and scalable adoption across the NHS. TrustX Health provides a trusted pathway for AI adoption and will deliver: A front door for AI agent deployment across the NHS and social care, including: Scoring and verification of existing Agentic AI systems Skunkworks evaluation to create a collaborative space to determine which NHS and social care problems are appropriate for Agentic AI Support to build new AI agents or improve them to mitigate risks Real-world evaluation against productivity and cost-effectiveness metrics An open-source Agentic AI Trust Score to accelerate transparency and adoption. A national collaboration environment to assemble leaders from the NHS, academia, industry, civil service, and research institutes. Partnerships with NHS provider and social care sites to test live Agentic AI deployments, beginning with early work already underway at Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. A sustainable and flexible funding structure, combining different funding approaches to support organisations, from startups to large suppliers, and the NHS and social care. Professor Anne Eden, Regional Chief Executive, NHS England South East, said: “Agentic AI will only deliver value for patients and staff if it is safe, transparent, and accountable. TrustX gives us a practical path to deploy AI with confidence across the NHS. By combining rigorous verification with real-world testing, this partnership helps ensure that autonomous systems support our workforce, improve care pathways, and earn public trust.” Professor Hatim Abdulhussein, Chief Executive Officer, Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex, said: “Frontline NHS teams need AI that is safe, practical, and ready for real-world pressures. TrustX connects innovation to the places where it matters most, giving clinicians and operational leaders a reliable way to test, evaluate, and adopt Agentic AI. This partnership will help the NHS move faster, reduce friction, and unlock meaningful improvements in productivity and patient care.” Usman Niazi, Chief Finance Officer, Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Agentic AI has huge potential to transform the way non clinical services work to support high quality patient care. We need to be bold, agile and focused in determining the most effective way of realising these opportunities on behalf of the local communities we serve.” A group of pioneering founders from leading UK health tech companies are actively shaping the design of TrustX Health. These organisations are already demonstrating how AI can be deployed safely and responsibly in real-world settings. Contributing founders include Dr Dom Pimenta of TORTUS, Dr Haris Shuaib of Newtons Tree, Carmelo Insalaco of Rapid Health, Dr John Jeans of CLEARnotes, Amna Askari and Rachel Finegold of Frontier Health AI and Seb Barker of Magic Notes (Beam). They will be bringing practical insight and innovation to ensure the initiative meets the needs of clinicians, patients, and the wider health system. They said: “TrustX is a vital step towards ensuring AI in health and care is deployed responsibly and transparently. The risks and complexities of AI are real, and the landscape is evolving rapidly. As founders of leading healthcare AI companies, we share a commitment to building technologies that are safe, trustworthy, and aligned with the needs of clinicians and patients. By contributing to TrustX, we aim to set a benchmark for responsible innovation and help create an ecosystem where AI delivers measurable benefits without compromising safety.” Launch event TrustX Health officially launched yesterday (9 December 2025) at the University of Cambridge, with leaders from NHS England, government, academia and pioneering AI companies in attendance. The event featured keynote speeches, including from David More, who shared insights from the financial services industry, panel discussions on safe Agentic AI deployment and workforce support, and a live demonstration of the Trust Score. The attendees then discussed the next steps in developing the initiative. Get in touch Get in touch if you want to learn more: enquiries@healthinnovation-kss.com. Professor Umang Bhatt, Director, Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence Lab, University of Cambridge “The future of AI in health and care depends on trust grounded in evidence. TrustX allows us to bring scientific rigour to the evaluation of Agentic AI, linking human-centered research with real clinical and operational environments. This is an important step toward ensuring that AI agents behave reliably, align with human values, and can be deployed at scale with confidence.” Manoj Saxena, Chairman, Responsible AI Institute “The NHS is poised to lead the world in safe adoption of Agentic AI. TrustX provides the verification architecture, trust scoring, and governance infrastructure needed for autonomous systems to operate responsibly in high-stakes environments. This initiative demonstrates how the UK can set a global benchmark for operationalising safe and trustworthy AI in healthcare.” Sarah Woolnough, Chief Executive, The King’s Fund “We are delighted to join the partnership to launch TrustX and to play a role in supporting the development, validation and implementation of Agentic AI within an NHS environment. The 10 Year Plan for Health rightly says innovation and use of cutting-edge technology can play an important role to tackling some of the operational pressures and challenges facing our health and care system. Longer term, there is huge potential for AI – if implemented well – to transform how the NHS works as well as improving care for patients and how people experience NHS services.”