Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB has announced plans to procure an ambient voice/dictation tool to serve a patient population of around 1.6 million people in the region.
The ICB aims to use the solution to help “reduce clinical burden, improve documentation accuracy and give time back to patient care”. According to a LinkedIn post by Mark Singleton, chief digital and information officer at Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, it will be the “largest AVT (Ambient Voice Technology) procurement in NHS history”.
The procurement follows a series of pilots and proof of concepts undertaken by different organisations across Lancashire and South Cumbria, with the ICB now looking for one single solution to cover their large population. This forms part of their wider digital strategy to 2029, centred around supporting innovation and progress across all care pathways and facilitating the shift towards prevention.
It also comes shortly after the ICB’s CCIO, William Lumb shared a discussion paper on LinkedIn, focusing on some of the key challenges with the digitisation of health systems and offering his thoughts on how a “single whole system flow solution” can help to meaningfully transform health and social care for the region.
Ambient voice solutions in health and care
In a recent HTN Now session, we were joined by experts from across the health and care sector, including Dr Shanker Vijayadeva, GP, NHS England (London region); Rhod Joyce, deputy director of digital transformation, NHS England; Dr Dom Pimenta M.D., co-founder & chief executive officer, Tortus AI; Dr Hannah Allen, chief medical officer, Heidi Health; and Dr Andrew Whiteley, managing director, Lexacom. Our panellists discussed some of the practicalities and key considerations to take into account when it comes to using ambient scribe technology in primary care and general practice. This meant delving into the risks, evidence, compliance, and how to move forward.
Digital Health and Care Wales recently conducted a market discovery exercise to explore the ambient voice technology solutions currently available and capable of meeting the needs of general practice and primary care throughout the region. The aim of the exercise was to gather market intelligence that would better inform their approach and “empower GP practices to use ambient scribe tools to drive general practice efficiencies and enhance patient care”.
In April, NHS England issued guidance on the use of AI-enabled ambient scribing products in health and care settings, to support chief information officers and chief clinical information officers when introducing this technology. The guidance aims to support business case development, risk assessments, governance, data protection impact assessments and evaluation and monitoring. A key part of the framework covers a series of considerations, posing questions to clarify the product functionality, outputs for transcription, outputs for downstream tasks and data and system considerations.
