Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust and Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust has shared progress with its ambient voice tech pilot and its 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. Prior to implementation, 72.7 percent of staff were reporting a negative impact from the amount of administrative work they were required to complete, and over half said they worked beyond their contracted hours to complete it.
During the pilot, 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. 91 percent of service users said clinicians were more focused, and 73 percent observed feeling “the same or more comfortable” during their appointments.
Outcomes were also communicated from the Leeds Community Healthcare digital inclusion programme, including findings from routine screening at the trust which showed 32 percent of patients are unable to complete “basic digital tasks”, and 57 percent of those aged 65 and over are unable to use digital services independently.
In collaboration with 100% Digital Leeds and Aire Logic, the trust has been focused on embedding digital inclusion into everyday care, prioritising staff training and routine digital ability assessments. Digital Health Support Hubs have reportedly supported more than 500 service users with the NHS App, as well as appointments and online health tools.
Associate CCIO and digital inclusion lead for the trust, Amanda Jackson, said: “Digital transformation will only succeed if everyone can benefit from it. Digital inclusion is how we make that happen.”
Wider trend: Digital transformation in Leeds
Pathology tech developed by Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is set to be deployed internationally to support the adoption of AI-enabled pathology for cancer diagnostics, following a commercial agreement with Epredia. TANGO, the tool developed by LTH’s National Pathology Imaging Co-operative, is said to support digital pathology and AI in cancer diagnostics by promoting consistency and efficiency in laboratory slide staining, overcoming challenges whereby slight variations can affect interpretation of results and limit the effectiveness of AI tools. It will now be incorporated into Epredia’s new pathology slide products, to be brought to market for pathology labs looking to adopt digital pathology workflows.
Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust has highlighted a targeted EPR tender publication in September, ahead of business case approval in 2027, as well progress on ambient voice pilots and its patient portal programme. The partnership has held future EPR stakeholder sessions with outcomes to inform its EPR specification, the board indicates, with tender publication expected around September or October 2026. Full tender evaluation is then scheduled for November to December, before hopes for full business case approval in January 2027.
A partnership has been launched between the DATA-CAN data research hub for cancer hosted at Leeds Teaching Hospitals and the West Midlands Secure Data Environment to support access to high quality cancer data for researchers. The partnership draws on pseudonymised patient data from patient records at major cancer centres across the UK, including on diagnosis, treatments, test results, and patient outcomes. The first dataset has been uploaded to the WM SDE, with three further datasets currently in development, Leeds Teaching shares.
