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Guy’s and St Thomas’ select new AI speech recognition tech for integration

Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust has chosen Nuance Dragon Medical One’s AI-powered speech recognition technology for integration into its Epic electronic health record (EHR).

The technology will form part of the trust’s Apollo Programme –  a digital transformation strategy set to reshape the way in which the trust delivers patient care and how patients engage with their own health. 

Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS FT, which also includes the Royal Brompton and Harefield hospitals, Evelina London Children’s Hospital, and local community services, recently established the programme in partnership with King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

Apollo will provide an EHR system from Epic and supportive technologies to replace paper documentation and consolidate patient records, enabling easy reference for clinicians at the point of care.  

Robyn Tolley, Apollo Programme Director at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS FT, said: “Our initiative aims to use technologies that make it easier for staff and patients to access required information and data. Our collaboration with Nuance will enable clinicians to create accurate, high-quality patient records more efficiently, empowering them with better information and freeing them to do what they do best – improving outcomes for patients.” 

By integrating Dragon Medical One with the Epic EHR, the trust will enable more than 10,000 clinicians to compile clinical documentation and navigate patient records by using their voice instead of typing. The combination of speech-to-text and productivity tools that populate text or execute actions with voice commands is expected to cut the time clinicians spend on documentation, allowing for more time to be spent on patient care. 

Diana Nole, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Healthcare at Nuance, commented: “Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust has been proactive in responding to the challenge of changing demands, such as the growth in telemedicine, by putting technology at the heart of its long-term strategy.

“Our solutions allow care teams to engage with conversational user interfaces to practice medicine and create effective clinical documentation while maximising the value healthcare organisations receive from their EHR.”