The Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust is piloting ambient voice technology from TORTUS, with an aim to support administrative tasks and reduce the time it takes to produce medical notes.
The trust has also this month upgraded its MY CARE patient portal platform, introducing digital appointment reminders, appointment confirmation, pre-appointment information and tasks and appointment cancellation requests for northern services, where text messages and emails will be utilised alongside the platform.
Its patient portal upgrade is planned to go live on 20 August 2025, with the aim to “reduce the number of letters printed and posted”, which is an ongoing project the trust has been working on since February 2024, when they originally made the switch to MY CARE for outpatient information. According to the trust, the change resulted in sending “over half a million fewer patient letters” and “saving over 1 million sheets of paper”.
On its ambient AI trial with TORTUS, the trust are trialling the technology within their cardiology services before implementing it elsewhere in the trust. Explaining the benefits of the technology, Dr Stuart Kyle, clinical lead for outpatient transformation, commented: “Ambient Voice technology has the potential to be a powerful tool to help us improve patient care. It won’t do the job of a clinician, we will still be checking all the notes and summaries to make sure they’re accurate, but it will allow us to focus even more fully on each patient without the need to make notes at the same time.”
Digital transformation across Devon
NHS Devon’s five-year Joint Forward Plan to 2030 was recently published as part of the ICB’s March meeting and has highlighted the role of digital in achieving the system’s strategic aims. The plan noted the importance of progress for the Devon and Cornwall Care Record and the One Devon Dataset. In line with the ICB’s aims around population health, tackling inequalities and enhancing productivity, the agenda for digital and data also outlined several objectives for years 1-2, years 3-4, and year 5 and beyond.
In June, NHS Devon ICB published a tender notice for a continuing healthcare, end-to-end person management digital system that can provide “enhanced transformation across all spectrums of the service” and help tackle their large caseloads. They were searching for a provider to replace two of their existing record systems: one for Devon ICB and another for Torbay and South Devon, with the aim to improve accessibility, streamline workflows and increase visibility of data to achieve a “better person experience”.
Earlier this year, the go-live dates were confirmed for the “joint Devon EPR”, in what was described as “an ambitious programme to transform care for patients and staff across Devon’s acute hospitals and community sites”. The One Devon EPR Partnership is made up of Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust, and University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust. With Royal Devon having already implemented Epic, University Hospitals Plymouth and Torbay and South Devon’s signing of a contract with the same supplier has been “a major step forward in the shared vision to implement a single EPR across Devon”.
