Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust has taken a face-to-face approach to deliver AI training across its workforce, aiming to make AI learning more accessible and help staff understand how Copilot can help to support them in their day-to-day roles.
The training is taking place aboard the trust’s Health Bus, which has so far visited sites including Prospect Park and West Berkshire Community Hospital. It reportedly uses practical demonstrations and real-world examples to show colleagues the capabilities of Copilot.
Staff are also being shown how the tool can be used to create emails, presentations, summaries, and reports, offering the opportunity to improve productivity.
Taking to LinkedIn, the trust shared details of its upcoming final roadshow session, scheduled to take place at Wokingham Hospital on 26 October 2026. Trust colleagues can book onto the training through the digital learning hub, it states.
Earlier in the year the trust published its five-year strategy, highlighting plans to redesign care pathways, transform care, and realise efficiency and productivity improvements with the use of AI, automation, and digital tools.
A trust productivity and efficiency programme has been initiated, with an initial income and expenditure planning gap of £15 million for 2026/27, and a two percent annual productivity growth requirement in tariff, it outlines. A leadership group is reportedly scoping priorities in line with required benefits to deliver financial sustainability over three-to-five years.
AI ambient documentation and electronic record integration, as well as process automation including referrals, is hoped to support productivity and efficiency improvements, increase clinical capacity, and reduce administrative costs, Berkshire Healthcare considers.
Wider trend: Health AI
Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust and Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust have shared progress with an ambient voice tech pilot and work focusing on digital inclusion. A pilot of Heidi AI at the Leeds Gender Identity Service aimed to address the services’ “admin burden and its significant impact on staff wellbeing”, the trusts share. Findings published by the trusts demonstrated that the AI solution effectively reduced time spent on clinical documentation, notably allowing clinicians to focus on patient conversations rather than note taking. “Clinicians reported richer, more person-centred interactions, with less pressure to capture information during appointments and more opportunity to concentrate on the individual in front of them,” the trusts state.
An AI Task Force has been established for the Liverpool City region, bringing together senior leaders from across industry, academia, healthcare, and public services to lead on ambitions for AI research, health innovation, and digital transformation. Nicola Hodson, former chief executive of IBM UK & Ireland, has been named as chair, with 14 other members being selected to shape the task force. Among them is Kate Warriner, chief transformation and digital officer at Alder Hey NHS Foundation Trust.
The National Commission into the Regulation of AI has put forward a series of recommendations for a future regulatory framework, finding strong support for the use of AI in healthcare being “conditional, rather than automatic”. The central conclusion, the commission goes on, is that future regulation needs to be more proportionate, lifecycle-based, and system-wide. “Current approaches were largely designed for products that are more static and easier to reliably assess at a single point in time,” it states. “AI-enabled products may iterate rapidly, perform differently in different settings and depend on the data, workflows, people and organisations around them.”
