Midlands procures ambient voice technology for 70,000 clinicians

NHS England in the Midlands has procured ambient voice technology (AVT) for 1,239 GP practices and around 70,000 clinicians across 15 NHS acute and community trusts.

AVT, sometimes known as ambient scribing, can be combined with generative AI to convert speech into structured medical documentation, such as notes and letters, which can be uploaded to patient records or sent to other NHS providers.

Ravinder Sahota, group chief information officer at the Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust and Sandwell and West Birmingham Trust, said: “Dudley had seen first-hand what was possible.

“Our clinicians were spending less time on documentation and more time with patients, and that told us we needed to find a way for the whole region to benefit.

“We built the clinical safety case, the business case, and the evidence base so that other trusts would not have to start from scratch. This framework shows what we can achieve when the NHS works collaboratively to get safe, effective AI into the hands of clinicians at scale.”

The technology records consultations and allows clinicians to focus on patients rather than their computer screen. It is intended to reduce administrative workload and may enable more patients to be seen.

It captures conversations and generates draft summaries, which are then reviewed and validated before being added to the patient record. There are plans to expand deployment of AVT across the Midlands.

An NHS England-sponsored study showed a 23.5% increase in direct patient interaction time during appointments, alongside an 8.2% reduction in overall appointment length when AI scribes were used.

The competitive procurement process, led by Dudley Group and Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals, named Heidi as the preferred provider.

Heidi is one of 23 suppliers included on NHS England’s self-certified AVT registry, which launched in January.

Dr Hannah Allen, GP and chief medical officer of Heidi, said: “NHS Midlands has put in place a route that any trust or ICB in the region can now use, built on thorough procurement and real evidence from frontline services. We are committed to delivering results for every organisation that chooses to use it.”

The technology was piloted at a same day emergency care unit (SDEC) and in a rheumatology clinic in Dudley. It resulted in an 80% reduction in documentation time in the SDEC, equivalent to the capacity of one junior doctor, and cut a six-month rheumatology letter backlog to 14 days.