TL;DR

RDaSH, the NHS foundation trust covering Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber, is using Accurx Scribe, an ambient voice tool built on Tandem Health’s AI, in mental health services for older people, Digital Health reported on 20 October. The software listens to consultations and drafts notes, summaries and referral letters, which clinicians check and approve before anything enters the patient record. The service is one part of a rollout across the whole trust.

Why this service

These appointments tend to be long. The trust says they often range across a patient’s mood, memory, family situation and medicines, and each produces a substantial amount of documentation. The aim is to cut the time clinicians spend typing during the appointment so they can pay more attention to the patient.

Dr Michael Seneviratne of the trust said it wants technology to “earn its place” and is using Scribe “carefully”, adding that the trust is “already seeing the difference it makes” for staff and patients alike, and that clinicians had been involved from the start. Doncaster Central MP Sally Jameson watched the tool draft a note live during a visit and said it showed how central technology is to the government’s plans for the NHS.

Accurx’s general manager, Jack Tabner, said mental health appointments are “long and sensitive”, so the product only works if the company hears from the clinicians using it every day. He described the trust’s clinician-led approach as a template for organisations moving “from pilots to adopting this technology safely at scale”.

Part of a wider spread

RDaSH is not the first trust to buy Accurx’s scribe. In March, Digital Health reported that University Hospitals of Leicester and University Hospitals of Northamptonshire had bought the product together for use by 10,000 clinicians in their acute and community hospitals.

Looking forward

Digital Health’s report gives no figures on time saved or on the accuracy of the drafts, so the benefits it describes are early and self-reported. In our view, mental health is a demanding test for ambient voice technology. Conversations are long and sensitive and often turn on memory and mood, so the clinician review step carries a lot of weight. NHS organisations weighing similar tools should ask for evidence from comparable services, not only from primary care.