AI is not coming to healthcare. It’s already here, with applications including predicting outcomes, reading scans, generating clinical notes, triaging patients and supporting drug discovery. The potential is vast. But so is the risk, especially when the supporting infrastructure fails to meet the expectations of regulators, clinicians or the public.
In the UK, where the NHS is more than just a healthcare provider, any attempt you make to scale AI must begin with: Where does the data live and who controls the infrastructure? This is where the idea of sovereignty in AI comes. As a principle, it separates responsible innovation from reckless deployment without data governance. And that’s exactly why a secure cloud infrastructure is not a “choice” in the UK healthcare system.
If you work anywhere near health data, you already know this tension well.
On one hand, AI can relieve the pressure on the NHS by cutting wait times, personalising treatment and automating the mundane. But on the other hand, data regulations are growing. The public is watching (and rightly so). A Broadcom survey found that 87% of UK citizens want NHS data to stay in the UK.
The NHS’s Data Saves Lives strategy lays out how data can be used to improve patient care, accelerate research and support better system planning. But it also assures the public that their data will be handled lawfully and securely, with safeguards that meet the highest standards of transparency and accountability. These protections reflect strict governance from the National Data Guardian and are reinforced by GDPR, which mandates that every organisation across the health and care system is clear about how data is used, stored and shared
The UK GDPR also treats health data as a special category, demanding the highest levels of protection. Transfers to third countries, even for training or hosting are legally fraught. Yet today, much of the AI infrastructure used in healthcare, even for inference is hosted on global clouds. Often, this involves:
And that’s often non-compliant as any transfer of personal data to non-EU countries must meet adequacy, Standard data protection clauses (SCCs), Binding corporate rules (BCRs) or explicit consent requirements according to the European Data Protection Board.
Even worse are hefty penalties of up to £17.5 million or 4% of global turnover for unlawful data transfers according to Article 83(5) of the UK GDPR. But more, it can erode the very trust that AI in healthcare depends on.
A secure cloud ensures to remain compliance in regulated industries like healthcare:
All data remains within UK borders. That includes training data, model outputs, logs and backups. No data ever needs to cross borders for processing or support.
No SCCs to draft. No binding corporate rules to rely on.
This satisfies the strict conditions under Articles 44–50 of the UK GDPR, which govern international data transfers and it does so without burdening legal or compliance teams.
Each healthcare organisation operates in a dedicated, single-tenant environment. No infrastructure is shared. No risk of unauthorised lateral access. No dependency on multitenant security boundaries.
It directly aligns with the GDPR principles of:
In high-risk AI systems like those supporting radiology diagnostics, predictive triage or clinical summarisation, traceability is the law.
The EU AI Act mandates that companies providing high-risk AI systems must keep automatically generated logs of these systems, as long as they have control over these logs. These logs must be kept for at least six months, or longer if required by EU or national laws, especially related to personal data protection.
A Sovereign and Secure cloud provides full logging across training and inference workflows, stored locally in the UK, governed by UK standards and accessible only to the deploying institution.
Trust is no longer won through assurances alone. It is earned through certification, transparency and proven controls, mostly in sectors like healthcare, finance and government.
Your AI infrastructure must be demonstrably secure and jurisdictionally compliant. Anything less invites operational risk and undermines public and stakeholder confidence.
Here’s what a compliant, sector-ready Sovereign, secure AI Cloud should include:
Our Secure AI Cloud offers high performance while being secure and compliant:
A secure cloud ensures patient data stays in the UK with isolated infrastructure, UK-only access and full regulatory compliance.
UK data residency ensures GDPR compliance, avoids cross-border transfer risks, and builds public trust in how health data is handled.
Single-tenancy isolates workloads, eliminating cross-tenant risk and ensuring full control over patient data and model operations.
Audit trails support traceability, accountability, and legal requirements for high-risk AI systems, such as diagnostics and triage tools.
Public trust enables data sharing, supports NHS strategies, and ensures long-term viability of AI in healthcare environments.
NexGen Cloud offers UK-only hosting, strict access control, single-tenant architecture, full auditability and high-performance AI infrastructure.