Croydon Health Services NHS Trust has awarded a five month contract with a value of £379,743 for support with its implementation of ambient voice technology across multiple departments.
The contract, starting on 20 May and due to end on 31 October 2026, has been awarded to Keystream Group Limited.
According to the contract award notice, Keystream Group Limited will be supporting the trust with its deployment of the Lyrebird Health AVT solution across ED, UTC, and OPD, to include EPR integration to enhance clinical workflows.
Earlier this year, the trust shared its quality strategy for 2026-29, linking to elements of the 10-Year Plan and outlining the role of digital and data in taking “a more integrated and transformative approach” to care delivery and quality.
In response to the challenges outlined in the 10-Year Plan, the trust sets out key factors in its approach to quality moving forward, including a focus on quality across the entire patient pathway and beyond organisational boundaries, establishing a co-production model with patients, carers, and staff at the centre, and embracing advancing technologies.
“Our staff have told us that the systems are inefficient, and effort is duplicated,” the board stated. “Our focus will be on optimising the time that clinicians can spend with patients and avoiding duplication of records and documentation. We are committed to empowering our workforce and equipping them with the right tools and training to deliver efficient, high-quality care.”
Wider trend: AVT
HTN was joined for a deep dive into AVT by a fantastic panel including Wahida Jabarzai, clinical AI and automation delivery lead at University Hospitals of Northamptonshire and University Hospitals of Leicester; and Ravinder Kaur Sahota, group CIO at The Dudley Group and Sandwell and West Birmingham. Our panel shared their learnings, experiences, and insights from AVT projects, covering clinical impact, risks, coding, governance, regulation, assurance, through to implementation, value, benefits realisation, and sustainability.
University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust has issued a preliminary market engagement notice outlining its intent to procure an ambient voice technology solution with an estimated value of £500,000. The solution sought is expected to meet a number of requirements, including having generative AI capabilities to support clinical and operational documentation, ambient voice capture, speech-to-text transcription, generative AI summarisation, clinical documentation generation, and structured template outputs. The trust also hopes to find a solution that can demonstrate functionality across meeting summarisation, action extraction, letter and document creation, and integration with UHB’s homegrown PICS EPR.
Plans for the roll out of ambient voice technology and a new EPR have been shared in the most recent meeting of Kingston and Richmond NHS Foundation Trust’s board. The trust is working in partnership with other South West London trusts and the SWL Acute Provider Collaborative to introduce AVT to tackle admin burden and enable clinicians to spend more time with patients, the board notes. Plans in development are to proceed with a phased introduction of the tech across clinical services in the coming months, starting with ED and outpatient gastroenterology and gynaecology. Phase two will then move to include more outpatient specialties and community services, followed by other clinical areas, it shares.
