News, NHS trust

University Hospitals Birmingham opens market engagement for ambient voice solution

University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust has issued a preliminary market engagement notice outlining its intent to procure an ambient voice technology solution with an estimated value of £500,000.

The solution sought is expected to meet a number of requirements, including having generative AI capabilities to support clinical and operational documentation, ambient voice capture, speech-to-text transcription, generative AI summarisation, clinical documentation generation, and structured template outputs.

The trust also hopes to find a solution that can demonstrate functionality across meeting summarisation, action extraction, letter and document creation, and integration with UHB’s homegrown PICS EPR.

Solutions should be mature, with available evidence of deployment in healthcare settings, and preferably in acute trusts, UHB states. It adds: “Given the pace of technological advancement in ambient voice technology and generative AI, the authority also expects suppliers to demonstrate the ability to evolve their offering over time, respond to emerging NHS requirements, and maintain alignment with market developments.”

The procurement process will be subject to business case approval, according to UHB, with the engagement deadline and expected date for the publication of any tender notice set as 18 May 2026. The contract is then expected to run from 30 November 2026 to 29 November 2031, with the potential for an extension to 29 November 2033 meaning a possible contract length of seven years.

To learn more about the opportunity, or to access additional documentation made available by the trust, please click here.

Wider trend: Ambient voice technology 

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