Sussex Hospice among the first to adopt AI pilot to improve patient experience

St Peter & St James Hospice will roll out an AI transcribing tool to cut paperwork, reduce   administrative hours and improve patient experience.

The tool, called Heidi, uses AI ambient listening to help clinicians take notes and create documents, such as referral letters and patient summaries. The clinician checks and signs off its outputs.

St Peter & St James Hospice is amongst the first for the AI pilot, being one of a few hospices in the country to adopt the technology, which is already used by more than 60% of UK GPs.

Heidi will ease clinicians’ workload, speed up admin time and allow doctors to focus on their patients during appointments, not their notes.

St Peter & St James Hospice has recently celebrated 50 years of specialist care provision through its Inpatient Unit and community team, and supports over 1,000 patients and their families and carers each year. Their vision is to be a modern, safe and sustainable hospice for generations to come, and looking at cost-efficient solutions is one factor to enable this vision. [detail here – number of patients supported etc]

A two-month pilot of the technology found potential savings of at least 45 minutes, per clinician, per day. Such efficiency gains may allow for an additional patient visits daily, improving both clinical efficiency and the capacity for direct patient care.

Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting has endorsed the technology, praising its capacity to reduce the time clinicians spend “pushing pens”. The government’s 10 Year Health Plan for the NHS aims to move the service from analogue to digital, using tools such as AI scribes. Last year, the government announced that £100 million would be invested in hospices for capital costs, to improve their care.

Hospices face a challenging landscape. Two in five hospices in the UK are planning to make cuts, as costs surge at the same time as demand.

Dr Helen McGee, Medical Director at St Peter & St James Hospice, said: “As clinicians, any technology that enables us to spend more time focusing on our patients is a really positive resource. With Heidi, our teams are spending less time behind their desks filling out forms – and more time face-to-face with patients. But crucially, it’s also making that time more valuable: clinicians are no longer scribbling notes during consultations, they can fully focus on the person in front of them.”

Steve Thorlby-Coy, Director of Transformation for Hospice UK said: “Hospices are vital to our health and care system, from managing pain and symptoms to helping people enjoy the things that make life meaningful. AI tools like Heidi will be vital to ensuring hospices can continue to offer their crucial support, even under challenging circumstances, and early results suggest they can be adopted successfully across the hospice sector.”

Founded in 2019, Heidi Health is trusted by clinicians in over 50 countries, supporting over 1.5 million medical appointments a week.

Hannah Allen, Chief Medical Officer at Heidi Health, said: “As a clinician myself, I know what a difference it makes when you can look away from your notebook and focus on the patient in front of you. Through this partnership, Heidi will free up clinicians from administrative burdens to focus on the work that matters most.”