University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust has gone live with a digital outpatient web assistant, designed to “replicate a phone call as much as possible”, forming part of its My Medical Record, patient portal.
The virtual assistant aims to “improve the patient journey”, offering a place for patients to “find answers to some frequently asked questions” on hospital services within the trust, with information available on outpatient appointments, blood tests, research, patient medical records and more.
Said to work like a chatbot, it uses automated flows to assist patients, staff and relatives to access information. Alex Kimber, the trust’s outpatient manager at University Hospital Southampton, posted about the launch of the virtual assistant on LinkedIn, noting how they chose not to use AI as part of the chatbot and that “there is scope to do much more with it.”
He added: “We have designed it by replicating a phone call as much as possible and worked in patient and staff forums to build it with the patient and staff journey in mind. This is an essential part of creating a seamless outpatient journey at UHS, by creating new, alternative, and quicker ways to access information and contacting our teams. It will also support our booking teams, as it should be quicker than a phone call.”
“This is a new way for patients to access information, easily on mobile, PC, or tablet, and be able to interact with our outpatient appointment team to be able to query, amend, or cancel an appointment.”
Virtual assistants and chatbots in health and care
NHS Oxfordshire and NHS Buckinghamshire Talking Therapies services recently introduced an AI-powered chatbot from Limbic, as part of their ongoing commitment “in meeting the demand for mental health support”. It was developed with the aim to provide patients with “interactive, supportive, and non-judgemental” help during their mental health journey.
Earlier this month, Microsoft launched Microsoft Dragon Copilot, an AI assistant for clinical workflow that brings together natural language voice dictation and ambient listening capabilities to support documentation, surfacing important information, and task automation. Functionality available includes the ability to create clinical documentation, with Copilot capturing patient-clinician conversations and orders, converting them into “high quality, comprehensive, specialty-specific notes”.
Last year, a new chatbot function was launched on the NHS Coventry, Warwickshire and Solihull Talking Therapies website, designed to take website visitors through an online conversation and exercises to process referrals to the service. Information garnered through the chatbot is also automatically populated in the patient record, with the trust highlighting how this reduces the need for patients to repeat information.
