Heidi report says AI scribe cut NHS documentation time by 86 percent

TL;DR:

• AI medical documentation vendor Heidi has published a UK report covering more than 15 million patient visits, claiming an 86% reduction in documentation time, more than 4 million hours of clinical capacity returned, and burnout improvements for 95% of clinicians.
• Concrete site-level numbers include cutting discharge letter processing from 9.03 days to 2.6 minutes at one emergency department, eliminating a 2,700-letter clinic backlog within four months at another, and £95,200 of annualised capacity savings on a single same-day emergency care pilot at Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust.
• Resultsense view: this is the first published UK NHS deployment dataset large enough to compare across primary care, emergency care, mental health and community settings. The Doccla virtual-care report covered separately today shows the same NHS pressure being addressed from a different angle — the productivity story is no longer one vendor’s claim.

Heidi’s software currently handles more than half a million UK patient interactions a week. The report draws on ten independent service evaluations and pilot reports, plus the company’s platform analytics through October 2025. NHS England has directed integrated care boards and providers to implement ambient voice technology in line with national guidance on safe AI deployment.

What the deployment data shows

Modality Partnership in primary care halved documentation time during consultations and cut after-hours paperwork by 61%; documentation-related stress fell 58% and self-reported work-life balance improved 45%. The North East London Integrated Care Board reported a 67% stress reduction. A community frailty team cut consultation time by up to 12 minutes per visit, projecting £313,484 of annualised savings at a £5.10 return per £1 spent. Patient satisfaction with services using the tool sat at around 90%.

Heidi as a UK case study

The vendor’s own commercial trajectory tracks the NHS rollout. Heidi grew annualised recurring revenue from roughly $1m to $50m in two years, reached a valuation of about $660m, and now employs over 500 people globally with UK headcount tripling annually. Backer Blackbird described Heidi as “the fastest-growing company in its portfolio since the early years of Canva and Leonardo.Ai.” Beyond ambient transcription, Heidi has launched Heidi Remote for wards and rural clinics, Heidi Evidence for clinical inquiries, and Heidi Comms for patient-facing communications across voice, text and chat.

What the data doesn’t yet show

The independent evaluations cited in the report are pilot- and site-level rather than population-level, and the headline 86% figure is an average across documentation types and settings. Vendor-published data should be read against the NHS’s own forthcoming evaluation programmes, which will need to disaggregate the time-saved claim from clinical-quality and patient-safety outcomes. Dr Hannah Allen, Heidi’s chief medical officer, framed the deployment as “freeing up clinicians’ cognitive load so that they can focus on patients, not paperwork” rather than replacing clinical judgement.

Looking forward

Expect NHS England, integrated care boards and the Royal Colleges to scrutinise these numbers in the coming months, especially where claimed productivity gains are used to justify recommissioning decisions or workforce planning assumptions. The bigger question is whether the productivity gains compound — whether 4 million hours returned to clinicians translates into shorter waiting lists or simply absorbs into existing demand.