NHS Midlands has completed an at-scale procurement of Heidi’s ambient voice technology (AVT) solution to cover all 1,239 GP practices and 15 acute and community trusts in the region.
The region-wide procurement, led by The Dudley Group and Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals, will support all GPs to access the technology without needing to undertake a separate local process. Heidi, the selected supplier, is one of 23 suppliers listed on NHSE’s self-certified AVT registry, which was first published back in January.
The news follows a pilot of the solution in same day emergency care at Dudley, where it reportedly delivered an 80 percent reduction in documentation time, and in rheumatology, where it reduced a six-month letter backlog down to 14 days.
Ravinder Sahota, The Dudley Group and Sandwell and West Birmingham’s group CIO, said: “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.”
Anand Rischie, GP partner at Modality Pleck Health Centre in Walsall, has been involved in piloting AVT since July 2024, noting: “The essence of general practice is the doctor-patient relationship which starts from building a rapport between doctor-patient, having that eye contact, having a conversation which leads to discussions and shared management. I think AVT is helping to bring that back and helping patients feel more listened to.”
Wider trend: AVT
HTN was joined for a deep dive into ambient voice technology (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.
An ambient voice technology programme hosted by East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, is to offer selected hospices across England a free six month trial to access the CLEARnotes tool. The initiative is said to provide both inpatient and community hospice services with access to the AVT tool, capable of listening to clinical conversations and automatically create medical notes and documentation. Hospices can claim up to 30 licenses for the tool, accompanied by funded implementation support and training.
Midlands Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust has started a six-week trial of AVT. The pilot is to run to 3 August 2026, with 40 clinicians taking part across a small number of areas including children and families, community health services, mental health services, and with some nursing colleagues. Patient consent will be sought and recorded prior to use, MPFT confirms, with clinicians to offer details on what is involved and how the tech works. Feedback will be collected from patients and service users taking part via an online feedback form. Questions cover initial thoughts and feelings about AVT use, concerns, and any considerations that MPFT should take into account before introducing the technology.
