NHS pilot aims to give Kent clinicians more time with patients
Children and their families in Kent are taking part in the county’s first clinical artificial intelligence pilot to enhance patient care and reduce the administrative burden on clinicians and social workers.
Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust is the first of several sites across health and social care to take part in a three-month pilot of AI-assistant, TORTUS to help increase face-to-face time with children and their parents during Community Paediatric Service appointments.
Each month, the service offers thousands of appointments to children with developmental conditions such as autism, ADHD, cerebral palsy, and muscular dystrophy.
From this week, 12 clinicians, including paediatricians, nurses and therapists, will start to use TORTUS’s AI-powered voice recognition technology in up to 5,000 consultations to generate comprehensive notes and summary letters.
Ruth Clement, KCHFT’s Head of Children’s Therapies, said: “We really want to put the software through its paces, testing its accuracy, how it copes with different accents, multiple people in the room and also background noise. When we are working with children, it is naturally going to be noisy, but in testing and training, we’ve already seen how it cleverly filters.
"AI is not about doing the job of the doctor or clinician, they will still review all summaries and letters for accuracy. We hope that by using this software the clinicians will be able to focus even more of their attention on the family during an appointment.”
Thorough testing has already demonstrated the technology’s ability to filter extraneous noise effectively, offering a promising solution for busy clinical environments.
The multi-site pilot also includes trials with KCHFT’s Acute Response Team, GPs at Northdown Surgery in Margate, Hildenborough & Tonbridge Medical Group and Woodlands Family Practice, clinicians at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, and adult social care workers from Kent County Council.
Dr Dominic Pimenta, Chief Executive at TORTUS, said: “We are delighted to be partnering with Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust, NHS Kent and Medway ICB, Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust and Kent County Council adult social care on this important multi-site pilot, giving us the opportunity to test TORTUS in real-world conditions across the county.
“By initially focusing on the unique challenges of paediatric consultations, including background noise, multiple voices, and diverse accents, this pilot will allow us to refine the technology further. Our goal is to ensure that clinicians can spend less time on administration and more time with their patients. This study is an important step in demonstrating how GenAI can relieve pressures on the healthcare system while improving both clinician and patient experience.”
Patient data security is a top priority. All data processed through TORTUS is handled in secure environments and deleted immediately after documentation is generated, with no long-term retention.
KCHFT Associate Medical Director and Victoria Bakare said: “Our clinicians are really keen to explore it, with the hope it can dramatically help in day-to-day clinical work.
“We have commissioned an independent evaluation to truly understand the impact it can have. With our partners, we want to test this in different settings across health and care and we will be sharing the results, to help drive innovation across health and care.”
