Advancing Equity in Health Through AI-Driven Collaborative Networks
At the heart of our LIAS-funded project, Advancing Equity in Health Through AI-Driven Collaborative Networks, is a simple but urgent question: how can digital innovation reduce, rather than deepen, health inequalities in later life? Working in partnership with care providers, training organisations and community stakeholders, our research explores how artificial intelligence can support more equitable telehealth practices in care homes and underserved communities.
The project was inspired by longstanding concerns about digital exclusion in adult social care. While telehealth technologies expanded rapidly during and after the pandemic, implementation has often been uneven. Care homes serving disadvantaged populations frequently lack the infrastructure, training and collaborative networks needed to benefit fully from digital tools. Our work therefore moves beyond technological optimism, focusing instead on co-produced, place-based models of AI integration that foreground workforce capability, ethical governance, and lived experience.
Support from the Leicester Institute for Advanced Studies has been instrumental in enabling interdisciplinary collaboration and protected time for knowledge exchange. LIAS funding has allowed us to convene cross-sector dialogues between health practitioners, digital innovators and social scientists, strengthening both the theoretical and applied dimensions of the project. These conversations are shaping practical guidance around digital literacy, recognising deterioration, and responsible AI adoption in care settings.
Looking ahead, we are developing a larger-scale programme of research examining AI, ageing and health inequality across regional and national contexts. Building on our current findings, we are preparing an ESRC funding application to extend this work into a multi-site study focused on digital infrastructures, workforce resilience and community wellbeing. Alongside this, we are delighted that our wider research trajectory has recently been strengthened by a successful ESRC Doctoral Training Partnership award, supporting emerging scholarship in related areas of digital health and social equity.
Through LIAS, this project has become more than a standalone study. It is evolving into a platform for sustained interdisciplinary engagement around ethical AI, social justice and inclusive urban futures.