HASTE-3D is building AI triage for NHS urgent care. This is our pledge to build it fairly: with women and Black communities at the table from the start, and with the evidence to prove it.
We pledge to build health technology that is fair by design, tested on the people it serves, shaped by the communities it affects, and held to account in public. We will not treat equality as a statement on a website. We will treat it as a standard our technology, our workplace and our partnerships must meet.
The HASTE-3D founder [Bridget Oliseneku]On behalf of HASTE-3D
Triage decides who is seen first. If a triage system is less accurate for some people, the harm is immediate. These are the gaps we are designing against.
An independent UK review of equity in medical devices found that pulse oximeters can overestimate oxygen levels in people with darker skin, which can delay treatment.
Source: Independent review of equity in medical devices, UK Government, 2024National maternity reviews have repeatedly found that Black women in the UK are several times more likely to die during pregnancy or shortly after birth than white women.
Source: MBRRACE-UK confidential enquiry reportsWomen have long been under-represented in clinical research. Conditions such as heart attack can present differently in women, and are more likely to be overlooked when the evidence behind a tool reflects men.
Source: widely documented gender data gap in clinical researchSpecific promises, not slogans. Each one is something you can hold us to, and each is linked to the reporting set out below.
Women use urgent care differently, are under-represented in the evidence behind it, and too often go unheard.
We will test and report how our technology performs for women separately from men at every stage of validation, including pregnancy, the menopause transition, and conditions where women's symptoms are more likely to be missed or dismissed.
We will aim for balanced gender representation among our clinical advisers, our Health Advisory Board and the people who make decisions about our product, and we will publish our progress.
We will set pay bands before we recruit, show them in job adverts, and review pay and progression for gender gaps as soon as we have the numbers to do so meaningfully.
We work flexibly and remotely. We will support carers, parents and anyone returning after a career break, including career changers, with fair parental leave and a genuine route back into work.
We have zero tolerance for sexual harassment and sexism. Anyone can raise a concern with an independent person outside the company, and no one will be penalised for doing so.
We will actively look for women-led suppliers and partners, including women-founded health technology companies and women's health organisations.
Trust in healthcare is earned, not assumed. We want Black patients, clinicians and colleagues to find something built with them, not about them.
We will co-design with Black patients, carers, clinicians and community organisations, including Black African, Black Caribbean and Black British people. We will pay fairly for time and expertise, and we will not expect anyone to educate us for free.
Wherever our technology relies on skin colour, images or sensors, we will test it across skin tones and ethnic groups, publish the results, and fix gaps before we say it is ready. We will not rely on devices that are known to underperform on darker skin without correcting for it.
We will test how our system understands different accents, dialects, names and languages, so that no one gets worse triage because of how they speak or what they are called.
We will recruit openly and fairly, shortlist on skills and potential, advertise through varied networks, and offer sponsorship and mentoring, not just a welcome.
We have zero tolerance for racism, including the small, everyday kind. We will name it when we see it, act on it, and protect anyone who reports it.
We will name health inequalities plainly because they are real. We will never use them as marketing.
Fairness has to hold across every group, and it has to be built in, not added later.
We will meet our duties under the Equality Act 2010 for all nine protected characteristics, and work to the spirit of the NHS Equality Delivery System with our NHS partners.
We will carry out an equality and health inequalities assessment before each major release of our technology, and act on what it finds.
We aim to meet WCAG 2.2 AA on our website and products, use plain language, and make reasonable adjustments willingly for disabled and neurodivergent people.
Anyone can tell us where we are falling short. We will respond respectfully, act on what we learn, and say what we changed.
HASTE-3D is a small, founder-led company, and we are at the start of this work. We would rather make commitments we can keep than claims we cannot back up. Where we do not yet have data, we will say so.
We will publish a plain-language DEI report every year, starting with what we set out to do and what happened. Because we are a small team, we will report on actions and outcomes, and we will group figures so that no individual can be identified.
| Area | What we will track | Reported |
|---|---|---|
| Fairness of our technology | Performance by sex, age, ethnicity, skin tone and language, wherever data allows, with gaps and fixes described | Annual report |
| Voices in design | Range of patients, clinicians and community organisations involved, and what we paid for their time | Annual report |
| Balance in decision-making | Gender and ethnic balance of our advisory board and decision-making groups, shown in aggregate | Annual report |
| Pay and opportunity | Pay bands in adverts, and our review of pay and progression for gender and ethnicity gaps | Annual report |
| Speaking up | Concerns raised, how they were handled and how long they took, anonymised | Annual report |
| Accessibility | Results of our accessibility checks against WCAG 2.2 AA, and what we are fixing | Annual report, and after major site changes |
If we are getting something wrong, we want to know. If you would like to help shape what we build, we would like to hear from you.
