19 May 2026

Dr Siobhán O’Connor says she is excited about the future of the AI Nurses Network as it continues to evolve as a global network that supports nurses to develop and apply artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, models and tools to benefit patient care and population health.

This novel clinical research network was launched in December 2024 at the annual ACORN - A Centre Of Research for Nurses & Midwives conference at Guy’s and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust (NHS FT). It enables nurses to access free training on AI and data science, seed funding and scholarships, and events to connect with AI researchers and industry to help nurses their ideas for AI-based technologies off the ground.  

The AI Nurses Network promotes a number of online training programmes (e.g., Innovation Scholars, Introduction to Data Science for Healthcare Professionals, Ethics and Information Governance for AI, AI for Scientific Research) hosted by King’s Health Partners Digital Health Academy to train nurses in the core technical and applied areas of AI and data science.  This ensures nurses learn about the various ways AI can be developed and applied in education, research, and clinical practice to build capacity in the nursing workforce in this important area of informatics.

The network also runs bespoke AI training workshops exclusively for nurses and hosts a webinars series via a dedicated YouTube channel to showcase nursing and other researchers from around the world pioneering AI in nursing. 

The networks’ seed funding call in 2025 awarded more than £50,000 in funding to a number of research initiatives including a team of nurses based at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (Pavana Pillai) and Oxford Brookes University (Dr Marion Waite) who are evaluating a prototype AI-powered enhanced recovery pathway progress dashboard for postoperative care, and a team of nurses at Edinburgh Napier University exploring AI agents to support lifestyle behaviour change in patients with coronary heart disease (Dr Sahar Konsari). A student scholarship was also established and awarded to a final year King’s undergraduate nursing student (Alice Hurcombe) who contributed to a systematic review on the ethical dimensions of using AI in nursing.

Dr Siobhán O’Connor, Senior Lecturer in the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Palliative Care at King’s College London, set up the AI Nurses Network with a group of colleagues at King’s College London and received funding from the Burdett Trust for Nursing to establish and grow the network across the UK and beyond.

Speaking to KHP News, Dr O’Connor gave an update on AI Nurses Network and its future plans.

Following on from its first year of inception, how has the AI Nurses Network evolved?

We’ve been blessed so far with a supportive funder and a wonderful team of colleagues from across King’s College London who have really helped the network go from strength to strength over the last 18 months.

We’ve also had a fantastic response from all the nursing associations, professional groups and communities of practice we have engaged with across the UK and worldwide. For example, we got funding through King’s Together Fund to run a hackathon on AI in nursing last September and we had over 30 nurses, AI researchers, and industry attend to brainstorm solutions to waiting times in emergency care. First prize (£1,000) went to a nurse-led team who proposed leveraging AI based modelling to enhance real-time communication with people waiting in the emergency department, keeping them informed of their assessment and management while reducing the administrative burden on nursing staff, while the second prize (£500) went to a team who wanted to enhance a new e-patient triage system with AI to promote accurate and efficient triage and the delivery of timely, personalised care.

We are thinking of hosting the hackathon online this year as we had lots of interest from nurses overseas who wanted to take part! 

What has been the impact of the AI Nurses Network on patient care?

We have just completed an online survey with the members of the network who either receive our monthly electronic newsletter or joined our LinkedIn group so we really have a global reach and the feedback from nurses so far is pretty positive.

The survey showed that nurses valued the quality of the training resources which helped improve their awareness and knowledge of AI and is supporting their professional development (Zhang & O’Connor, 2026).

Our members did make lots of useful suggestions to improve the network further so we’re currently sourcing additional funding to get those initiatives off the ground. We just secured NIHR Academy funding to run our first conference later this year which we are very excited about, so we’ll be bringing all the nursing expertise across the NHS and academia together to share knowledge and exchange ideas on AI. This should help spur future collaborations and AI-based technologies that improve patient care and health service delivery. 

How would you like to see the AI Nurses Network progressing as a clinical research network?

Over the last few months, we have started to appoint Country Directors in different regions to support nurses worldwide with AI in nursing education, research and practice as the World Health Organization wants to see more equitable distribution and use of AI for better human and planetary health.

For instance, in Canada we have two great co-directors, Dr Charlene Chu based at the University of Toronto, and Dr Charlene Ronquillo at The University of British Columbia, both of whom are experienced nursing informaticians developing AI technologies for patient care there. We also have an expanding group of Country Directors in parts of Asia such as Dr Vivian Hui at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Dr Lu-Ye Chen at the National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Taiwan, and Prof Janet Delgado at Yamaguchi University in Japan who are helping to increase the reach and impact of the network.

By combining the resources and expertise of nursing scholas globally, we will be able to have a greater impact long-term on nurses AI literacy and their ability to take part in and lead AI research that improves patient care and population health. 

Find out more and get involved at the AI Nurses Network ​​​​​.​