Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust recently introduced ambient voice technology to a range of their services as part of phase one of their two-phase trial, with the hope that it will “enhance the experience of patients and staff” and give clinicians more time to interact with patients.
Said to help clinicians document patient consultations in real time, the technology captures spoken words and converts them into clinical notes and letters, to then be reviewed by clinicians for accuracy and completeness. The data is then stored in patient health records and “processed securely in accordance with clinical and safety standards”, the trust notes.
The pilot is said to run between July and August 2025, before moving onto a second phase between September and October 2025. Initially it will be used in both inpatient and outpatient services, including cancer outpatients, community paediatrics, dermatology, ENT, critical care, diabetes, endocrinology and metabolism. This includes John Radcliffe Hospital, Churchill Hospital and Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Oxford, and the Horton General Hospital in Banbury.
“TheHill team is well set up to pilot new technologies that may be of benefit to patient care,” Megan Morys-Carter, director of digital innovation at Oxford University Hospitals, said. “These evaluations are a really important part of working out whether a technology works for us and for our patients before we commit to a procurement. We will be getting detailed feedback from staff and patients as well as measuring the effect on productivity and accuracy.”
AI and ambient voice technology used across health and care
Earlier this month, Somerset NHS Foundation Trust shared a series of communications explaining to patients how the trust is using technologies such as AI, ambient voice, virtual nursing, and generative AI when it comes to appointments and other healthcare services. They’ve outlined the use of AI in planning services and for completing administrative tasks, as well as highlighting that during appointments clinicians may use ambient AI for real-time dictation.
In April, NHS England issued guidance on the use of AI-enabled ambient scribing products in health and care settings. A key part of the framework focuses on a series of considerations, posing questions to clarify the product functionality, outputs for transcription and downstream tasks, as well as data and system considerations, with the aim to support business case development, risk assessments, governance, data protection impact assessments, evaluation and monitoring.
OpenAI, the AI research and deployment company responsible for ChatGPT, has launched a new benchmark for evaluating the capabilities of health AI systems. The benchmark was built in partnership with 262 physicians practising across 60 countries and is designed to cover a wide range of scenarios to help researchers measure the benefits of AI systems across the health sector and beyond.
