Evaluating AI-powered speech-to-text technology to improve emergency care
The NHS faces unprecedented outpatient backlogs following COVID19, alongside longstanding challenges including workforce shortages and rising demand. A key contributor to reduced clinical capacity is time spent documenting consultations within electronic health records (EHRs), limiting patient contact time and contributing to clinician burnout. Ambient AI documentation tools, which passively capture consultations and generate structured clinical notes, offer a potential solution by reducing administrative burden and improving efficiency and satisfaction, but evidence from NHS settings remains limited.
To address this, the NIHR HealthTech Research Centre (HRC) in Sustainable Innovation is helping to evaluate the use of Ambient Voice Technology (AVT) in Emergency Departments. The 12-month pilot will assess how AI-powered speech-to-text technology can improve care by reducing documentation burden in high-pressure, urgent-care environments while supporting better communication between hospital and primary care teams.
The evaluation will generate evidence on the effectiveness, safety and acceptability of the technology in urgent care settings, helping to inform future NHS adoption.
The pilot builds on the Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust’s national leadership in digital innovation, having become the first NHS Trust to fully integrate AVT into its Epic Electronic Patient Record system. Since launch, the technology has supported more than 2,700 outpatient consultations, with positive feedback from both patients and clinicians. Once fully rolled out, AVT could support around 15,000 additional outpatient appointments each year, helping to improve access to care, reduce waiting times and enhance patient experience.
To support development, our HRC is:
- Working with Royal Devon and University of Exeter partners to evaluate the real-world impact of Ambient Voice Technology
- Generating evidence to inform the safe and effective adoption of AI-enabled healthcare technologies
- Supporting implementation and evaluation across NHS clinical pathways
- Facilitating collaboration between NHS, academic and digital innovation partners
- Contributing to learning that will help inform future NHS policy and wider adoption of Ambient Voice Technology
