TL;DR
Nurses at Inverurie Hospital in Aberdeenshire are trialling an AI voice transcription system called Corti that automatically generates clinical notes from patient conversations. The system is learning to handle the local Doric dialect, and early results show note-taking time dropping from around 20 minutes to seven.
Teaching AI to speak Doric
The trial, running until May, uses ambient voice technology to listen to conversations between nurses, patients, and families, then generates structured clinical notes that staff review and edit. The system is being piloted in Inverurie Hospital’s Donbank ward.
Katie Anderson, senior charge nurse and project lead, said Corti initially struggled with the local Doric accent. One particularly broad-speaking staff member caused the system “some issues,” she said, though it improves daily as staff report misinterpretations back to the Corti team.
“We have had lots of laughs with the teuchter accent we have in our area,” Anderson said. “Sometimes it does not always pick up the Doric accent but we are getting lots of meaningful conversations from people as well.”
Less paperwork, more patient time
The practical benefit is straightforward: Anderson said patient notes that typically took 20 minutes now take around seven. That time saving lets nurses spend more of their shift engaged in direct patient care rather than documentation.
The technology has been used by other NHS boards across the UK but is being piloted in Scotland for the first time. NHS Grampian’s Innovation Hub is running the trial with support from Aberdeenshire Health and Social Care Partnership. After three months, the trust will evaluate whether the tool delivers sustained efficiency gains.
Patient Allan Rennie, a retired nurse who had an appointment transcribed by the system, described the process as “easy enough” and said: “If it is beneficial to patients and staff then it has to be good for the profession and patient care.”
Looking forward
The Doric trial highlights a practical challenge for healthcare AI in the UK: the country’s regional accents and dialects can trip up systems trained primarily on standard English. If Corti can handle Doric, it bodes well for deployment in other areas with strong local speech patterns. For NHS trusts considering similar tools, the Grampian pilot will provide useful evidence on whether ambient voice AI works outside urban, accent-neutral settings.