South East Coast Ambulance Service (SECAmb) has launched a pilot of Tortus’s Ambient Voice solution in its emergency operations centres, looking to free-up clinician time to assist more patients.
The tool listens in on conversations, transcribing spoken words into structured medical notes to be checked and approved. According to the trust, this is expected to reduce the amount of time taken by clinicians writing up notes following calls.
The project follows a similar pilot of the technology at Great Ormond Street Hospital, where early phase testing saw the AI assistant trialled by clinicians, medical actors, and 100 patients. There, clinicians participating in simulated clinics found that the solution “helped them give their full attention to patients when using the tool, without decreasing the quality of the clinic note or letter”.
Alongside the SECAmb pilot, due to run to February 2026, other ambulance services are also committed to testing the technology, including London Ambulance Service and South Western Ambulance Service.
Emma Webber, SECAmb’s clinical operations manager for integrated care (999 and 111), said: “We are keen to see how this technology and the transcription of assessments can offer time savings for our clinicians as well as provide a consistent clinical record that is shared with other healthcare professionals. The technology should support our staff to focus more on the patient as well as remove some of the administration processes that can be time consuming.”
Nick Roberts, CDIO at SECAmb, also highlighted how the results of the pilot will help guide the trust on how to best integrate this type of technology in the future.
Wider trend: ambient voice technology in health and care
NHS England is looking to create a supplier registry for ambient voice technology solutions, aiming to support buying authorities within the health and care sector when finding a compliant AI scribing tool. According to NHS England, the self-certified registry will provide a “transparent, centralised platform where AVT suppliers can self-declare compliance”. It will come with an accompanying resource library, with the aim of offering support for the procurement process, while also encouraging transparency around safety, data handling and performance.
Earlier in the year, NHSE also issued guidance on the use of AI-enabled ambient scribing products in health and care settings, to support chief information officers and chief clinical information officers when introducing this technology. The guidance aims to support business case development, risk assessments, governance, data protection impact assessments, and evaluation and monitoring. A key part of the framework covers a series of considerations, posing questions to clarify the product functionality, outputs for transcription, outputs for downstream tasks, and data and system considerations.
HTN was joined by a panel of experts from across the health sector for a focused webinar on the use of ambient scribe technology in NHS trusts. Panellists included Lauren Riddle, transformation programme manager at Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare (HIoW); Ynez Symonds, CNIO at HIoW; Dom Pimenta, co-founder and CEO at Tortus AI; and Stuart Kyle, consultant rheumatologist and clinical lead for outpatient transformation at Royal Devon University Hospital.
