- Patients and frontline staff could see huge benefits from new AI helping people out of hospital quicker and slashing bureaucracy.
- Tool is one of the Prime Minister’s AI Exemplars, including real-world projects using AI to make people’s lives easier and modernise services across health, justice, tax and planning.
- Group of leading projects will receive support to expand the use of their technology more quickly, helping to drive efficiencies and boost growth through Plan for Change.
Patients could get home to family and off busy wards more quickly, thanks to game-changing AI that could help write the documents that are needed to discharge people from hospital.
The cutting-edge technology will help cut waiting lists, by giving frontline staff the precious gift of time and making care more efficient so that loved ones return to the comfort of their homes quickly. Currently being developed at Chelsea and Westminster NHS Trust, it is one of many projects to receive backing from the Prime Minister as part of the AI Exemplars programme.
The AI-assisted tool could deliver the support that NHS staff have been crying out for – helping doctors to draft discharge documents faster by extracting key details from medical records, such as diagnoses and test results, using a large language model. After a full review from a medical expert responsible for the patient, these documents are then used to discharge a patient from a ward and refer them to other care services that may be needed.
It would radically improve an outdated system that can leave patients on wards unnecessarily for hours, waiting for time-pressed doctors providing urgent care to sit down and fill in forms before they can go home. In some cases, the current system for writing discharge summaries can also inaccurately record basic patient details – like what treatment they’ve had, or changes to medication – and put them in harms way.
Another project announced today, ‘Justice Transcribe’, will be transformational for Probation Officers – by helping to transcribe and take notes in their meetings with offenders after they leave prison. The technology, which was found to halve the time officers spent organising notes between meetings and in their personal time, is set to be given to all 12,000 probation officers later this year.
Projects being announced today as part of the Prime Minister’s AI Exemplars programme are prime examples of how the government wants to use AI across the public sector to make people’s lives easier and help deliver the Plan for Change. Over the coming months, these exemplars will be developed and trialled, with those showing the most promise potentially rolled out more widely. It follows the Prime Minister’s approach that people should not spend their time on tasks that AI can do quicker and better.
Speaking on a visit to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said:
This is exactly the kind of change we need: AI being used to give doctors, probation officers and other key workers more time to focus on delivering better outcomes and speeding up vital services.
This government inherited a public sector decimated by years of under-investment and is crying out for reform. These AI Exemplars show the best ways in which we’re using tech to build a smarter, more efficient state.
When we get this right across government, we’re talking about unlocking £45 billion in productivity gains – delivering our Plan for Change and investing in growth not bureaucracy.
Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said:
This potentially transformational discharge tool is a prime example of how we’re shifting from analogue to digital as part of our 10 Year Health Plan.
We’re using cutting-edge technology to build an NHS fit for the future and tackle the hospital backlogs that have left too many people waiting too long.
Doctors will spend less time on paperwork and more time with patients, getting people home to their families faster and freeing up beds for those who need them most.
The NHS Federated Data Platform, a system designed to connect IT across health and care services, is hosting the AI-assisted discharge summaries tool. This means that it can handover information to different care services in an efficient and secure way, while also making it easier to use the technology across the country if tests are successful.
Planning
The AI Exemplars programme will also include the ‘Extract’ tool, which will standardise data faster by converting decades-old, handwritten planning documents and maps into data in minutes. It will power new types of planning software to slash the 250,000 estimated hours spent by planning officers each year manually checking these documents.
Schools
Other technology backed by the programme, the ‘AI Content Store’, will also help make more accurate AI tools to support teachers to mark work and plan lessons – ensuring they are able to spend more time helping children in the classroom with face-to-face teaching, supporting the government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity.
Justice
A further tool in the programme is ‘Justice Transcribe’. Early feedback from probation officers has shown that the technology allows them to focus on the personal, and often emotive meetings with offenders, instead of having to interrupt to take notes and clarify details. The technology is based on ‘Minute’, part of the Humphrey package of AI tools built by government to help make the civil service more efficient.
Civil service
The suite of AI tools known as ‘Humphrey’, that helps make the civil service more efficient, is also included in the package. It comes as ‘Consult’, a tool in the package, analyses the thousands of responses any government consultation might receive in hours, before presenting policy makers and experts with interactive dashboards to explore what the public are saying directly.
It has been the first AI tool to undergo testing against a new ‘social readiness’ standard, where the tech was shared with members of the public to get their views on the value it adds, the strength of safeguards in place and the risks associated with using the technology. Members of the public noted that Consult is well targeted to replace an “old school process” that is very “archaic” and ripe for improvement with AI.
The independent report, completed after deliberative focus groups by the Centre for Collective Intelligence at Nesta, a charity focused on innovation for the public good, found that 82% of people felt positive or neutral about the use of the technology across government.
Notes to editors
With more to be announced in the coming months, AI Exemplars include:
- Justice Transcribe, Ministry of Justice.
- ‘Humphrey’, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
- Education Content store, Department for Education.
- AI Tax Compliance, HMRC.
- ‘Extract’ and the Digital Planning Programme, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
- ‘Minute’ for Local Government, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
- GOV.UK Chat, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
- AI for diagnostics, NHS.
