The National Health Service (NHS) England will trial a combination of AI and robot-assisted care to speed up the detection and diagnosis of lung cancer, the UK’s most lethal form of the disease.

The trial comes at the same time as the health service pledges to offer all smokers and ex-smokers the chance to be screened for lung cancer by 2030.

That expansion will lead to an estimated 50,000 lung cancers being diagnosed by 2035, of which 23,000 will be at early stage, which could save thousands of lives, it said.

The disease is a particular focus of the government’s forthcoming national cancer plan for England because it is Britain’s biggest cancer killer, reflecting historically high smoking rates. It claims 33,100 lives a year across the UK, around 91 a day.