East Lancashire to host NHS programme to help expand AVT

East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust (ELHT) is hosting a programme to deploy an ambient voice technology (AVT), across the NHS in England.

The trust is inviting NHS acute, community and mental health trusts to submit expressions of interest for a fully funded six-month deployment of CLEARnotes, which is designed to reduce documentation burden and improve clinician-patient interaction.

ELHT is hosting the pilot through the National CLEAR Programme, which the trust already hosts, and plans to start onboarding sites from May 2026.

Tony McDonald, chief integration officer at ELHT, said: “Innovation in the NHS must be grounded in safety, evidence and real-world impact.

“By hosting this fully funded pilot, we are enabling trusts to evaluate CLEARnotes in a structured way, ensuring that any future adoption is driven by demonstrated value and aligned to NHS governance standards.”

The deployments themselves will take place within the participating NHS trusts. ELHT’s role is to provide the NHS-hosted framework for the programme, including overseeing the expression of interest process and ensuring the pilot is delivered with appropriate clinical governance, safety standards and evaluation.

The aim is to provide a safe, NHS-led route for organisations to evaluate AVT in clinical settings, while ensuring learning and evidence from the pilot can be shared across the NHS.

Participating trusts will be able to deploy CLEARnotes in up to three services, enabling a practical and low-risk approach to improving productivity while protecting time between clinicians and patients.

Rather than operating as a standalone software trial, the programme will provide participating organisations with clinical engagement from day one, robust governance and patient safety frameworks, structured implementation and optimisation support, and clear evaluation of productivity and service impact.

During the pilot period, potential gain-share models will be explored collaboratively.

Any future payment structure would be directly linked to demonstrated impact beyond the pilot phase, ensuring long-term sustainability is aligned to proven benefits for clinicians and patients.

ELHT reported that its nurse-led pre-operative department has achieved a 14% improvement in productivity since deploying CLEARnotes with support from the CLEAR team.

Meanwhile, the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust’s pre-operative service has demonstrated a 25% productivity increase within a clinic since the trust launched a pilot of CLEARnotes in March 2025.