Guy Dickie, Head of Healthcare UK, Iron Mountain

Guy Dickie is Head of Healthcare UK at Iron Mountain, where he leads initiatives to digitise and unlock value from healthcare information assets. With over two decades of NHS experience, Guy shares insights on AI's transformative potential in diagnostic accuracy, workflow optimisation, and the UK's ambition to become the most AI-enabled healthcare system globally.

My questions are in bold - over to you Guy:

Who are you, and what's your background?

My name is Guy Dickie, and I am Head of Healthcare at Iron Mountain in the UK, having joined in late 2024. I have been in Healthcare since 2003. Originally from the Wirral, I studied Modern History & Political Science at the University of Birmingham and started my career in the British Army, where I served as a Captain in the Royal Artillery. I joined the NHS in 2003, initially in Service Redesign and Commissioning in the Leeds PCTs before moving to NHS Connecting for Health to lead a series of national IT programmes.

Remaining in Healthcare, I have since held Director roles in Johnson & Johnson EMEA and PwC where I specialised in delivering technology-enabled business transformation in both primary and acute care. I served as Director of Digital at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust through the covid pandemic.

What is your job title, and what are your general responsibilities?

I am Head of Healthcare at Iron Mountain UK, a role which covers a variety of responsibilities. I lead a team of six directors who are located across England. Together we seek to grow the business by supporting NHS and private healthcare organisations locally, regionally and nationally.

Our mission is to help our customers to manage, digitise, protect and unlock more from their information assets. This often involves organising, storing and digitising their paper medical records, as well as joining up medical records from different sources and providing access to them via our electronic document management solutions.

Can you give us an overview of how you're using AI today?

Iron Mountain's digital solutions are used to automate and increase speed, efficiency and accuracy across a variety of different sectors. Today, AI is starting to revolutionise the healthcare sector, in particular Digital Pathology, by enabling automated cancer detection, tumour classification, and workflow enhancements.

AI is already streamlining healthcare practices in the US with it being used to accurately diagnose diseases, achieving a mean sensitivity of 96%. This makes it 2% more accurate than humans. This in turn allows AI to be used as an additional consultant for diagnosis, as often two human consultants are required to interrogate and diagnose from digital images. By using AI, this can free up time for resource-constrained hospitals and other care settings. This has proven to be a popular approach within the NHS, with 76% of NHS staff stating that they support the use of AI for patient care.

What prompted you to explore AI solutions? What specific problems were you trying to solve?

Some of the main challenges facing the healthcare sector are time-consuming processes, particularly in environments that are already resource constrained. Even today, hospitals remain somewhat reliant on paper records. For example, statutory regulations and NHS requirements mandate that records be kept for a certain period of time.

This reliance makes it difficult to fully leverage the data these records contain and contributes to significant operational challenges, such as sharing information across multi-disciplinary teams and organisational boundaries.

This is an ongoing challenge in the NHS that can impact clinical outcomes, patient experience, efficiency and cost. Digitisation of these records is underway in some hospitals, and we are already seeing benefits such as increasing the accessibility of patient data, releasing real estate and enhancing productivity and decision-making.

Who are the primary users of your AI systems, and what's your measurement of success? Have you encountered any unexpected use cases or benefits?

At Iron Mountain, we offer AI capabilities through our InSight Digital Experience Platform (DXP), which is currently leveraged for non-clinical files and records, helping healthcare organisations streamline information management and automate workflows. We anticipate extending this to clinical files and patient records to enable direct 'chat with' functionality and summarisation in the coming months.

The primary users of AI vary, with NHS organisations gradually introducing the technology in a range of settings to give patients better care and support. Its purpose varies, with clinicians and pathologists leveraging it for diagnostic support, such as in radiology and digital pathology. Safety and ethical use of AI remain core tenets of its introduction, and central resources have been made available to the NHS to encourage and support safe adoption, such as the NHS AI Team's AI Knowledge Repository.

AI is increasingly being incorporated to streamline tasks and can be measured by its workflow enhancements and its ability to diagnose digital slides with 2% more accuracy than humans. This represents a significant improvement in the diagnosis of some cancers whilst also improving the patient experience and operational efficiency.

Additionally, AI features prominently in the UK government's new NHS 10-Year Plan, with its stated ambition to "make the NHS the most AI-enabled care system in the world". The plan is focused on shifting from a reactive, hospital-centric care model to a proactive, community-based, digital system. We anticipate that this move will allow AI to play a pivotal role in diagnostics, treatment, and operational planning.

What has been your biggest learning or pivot moment in your AI journey?

Throughout my 23 years in healthcare, there has been a significant evolution of technology used in healthcare strategy, planning and delivery in all care settings. My biggest learning in our AI journey has been just how quickly the landscape shifts and how essential it is to adapt our approach to data quality and governance as we seek to leverage the benefits.

How do you address ethical considerations and responsible AI use in your organisation?

New and emerging technologies such as AI naturally come with some reluctance and perhaps mistrust in some places. Many people, not just from the healthcare sector but in general, fear AI job displacement and have concerns about AI being biased or inaccurate, hinting at wider issues such as data protection and regulatory compliance.

At Iron Mountain we are committed to understanding AI privacy and addressing ethical concerns by upholding the highest standards of integrity, transparency, and responsible use of AI in our digital solutions for customers, and within our own company. Our recent research with FT Longitude showed that large UK organisations across a variety of sectors, including healthcare, are losing an average of almost £287,976 a year because of data integrity flaws. To avoid this, healthcare organisations must ensure they are using AI systems with the most up-to-date information and high-quality, compliant data.

What skills or capabilities are you currently building in your team to prepare for the next phase of AI development?

AI is constantly evolving, and the benefits are clear. For the healthcare system, talent development and learning are essential parts of innovation in this area, meaning investment in AI readiness is crucial to see tangible benefits such as reduced waiting times and better patient outcomes.

With Iron Mountain's InSight DXP, we are leveraging AI to include large language models in order to transform digital healthcare. Similarly, we have an extensive partner network whereby we can rapidly access 'best of breed' AI solutions and capabilities from trusted partner organisations.

If you had a magic wand, what one thing would you change about current AI technology, regulation or adoption patterns?

I'd accelerate the standardisation of AI validation in healthcare, specifically focusing on demonstrating its impact on key NHS metrics like reduced waiting times for diagnostics or improved accuracy leading to fewer repeat tests.

Clearer frameworks would build trust and facilitate adoption, allowing us to leverage AI's potential whilst ensuring data security – a critical concern where Iron Mountain's expertise in secure information lifecycle management is invaluable for compliance (e.g., GDPR in Europe).

What is your advice for other senior leaders evaluating their approach to using and implementing AI? What's one thing you wish you had known before starting your AI journey?

Focus on AI solutions that directly address pressing NHS/European healthcare system challenges, such as optimising resource allocation (measured by bed occupancy rates or staff efficiency) or improving patient flow (impacting average length of stay).

Engage clinicians early to ensure AI integrates seamlessly into their workflows and explain the importance of initial investment in data quality and interoperability.

Achieving seamless data exchange - a challenge across fragmented regional systems - is crucial for AI success, and robust data management is critical to unlocking its value.

What AI tools or platforms do you personally use beyond your professional use cases?

I utilise the capabilities of AI for quick information synthesis, for example when drafting solution documents for customers, and for aiding and challenging my own thinking on identifying potential solutions to complex problems. These tools mirror the analytical potential AI could bring to the vast amount of unstructured healthcare data that exists, helping identify efficiencies, better patient outcomes and improved services.

What's the most impressive new AI product or service you've seen recently?

Google Gemini, for example, is an impressive AI application which can be used for a variety of tasks, in particular, fast tracking manual administrative jobs in the healthcare sector. It's evident the use of AI is vital to the sector and why 81% of NHS staff are in favour of the use of AI for administrative services.

Finally, let's talk predictions. What trends do you think are going to define the next 12-18 months in the AI technology sector, particularly for your industry?

I think we will see a significant push towards agentic AI to tackle administrative burdens and improve the patient experience across the NHS and European healthcare systems.

This will help to improve workforce wellbeing and patient engagement, which is critical to the overall health of the health system.

I'd also expect to see a surge in federated learning to address data privacy concerns. This is essential for GDPR compliance in European systems and maintaining patient trust in the NHS, enabling collaborative AI development without compromising data security.

Generative AI will accelerate personalised treatment and care planning, increasing efficiency and reducing time and costs. Finally, I anticipate that AI-powered clinical decision support will likely become more integrated into Electronic Health Records, along with explainable AI, which will be critical for building clinician trust and ensuring responsible AI adoption.

Many thanks to Guy Dickie for taking the time to share his insights with Conversational AI News. You can learn more about Iron Mountain's healthcare solutions at ironmountain.com.