How an AI tool is helping U.K. clinicians save time and be present with patients
MANCHESTER, U.K.— Dr. Charles Pearman, a cardiologist at the Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, greeted a patient and his wife in a small examination room.
He asked the patient if he could use a voice-activated AI assistant to record the meeting, opened the app on his phone and put it on his desk.
Once the consultation began, he didn’t look at his phone or his computer. Instead, he faced the patient and his wife as the three of them discussed his heart condition.
It’s a notable change since just a few months ago. Then, Pearman would be typing notes into his computer while he talked with the patient; afterward, he would type a note into the medical record and dictate any correspondence with the patient or other doctors.
Now he’s using Microsoft Dragon Copilot. The system, designed for healthcare professionals, uses ambient voice technology, an AI system that listens to conversations and works in the background, without requiring users to issue commands or actively dictate.
“I’d say that it saves me an average of maybe three to five minutes per patient, and that doesn’t sound like very much, but by the time you add that up over eight consults in a morning, maybe it might give you enough time to fit in an extra patient.”
Dr. Charles Pearman, a cardiologist, at the Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. He has been using Dragon Copilot in a test program and says it saves him time on administrative tasks while also making it easier to focus on patients during consultations. Photo by Chris Welsch for Microsoft.
Dragon Copilot transcribed the meeting, organized the material the way Pearman prefers and added it directly to the patient’s record. Later, Pearman could ask Dragon Copilot to write clinical notes or a letter to the patient’s general practitioner, for example. And the patient can see the same information on their record.
“I’d say that it saves me an average of maybe three to five minutes per patient,” Pearman said. “And that doesn’t sound like very much, but by the time you add that up over eight consults in a morning, maybe it might give you enough time to fit in an extra patient.”
That could mean seeing more patients each week, which could add up to hundreds each year, he said. Pearman noted that that is significant because the waiting time to see him can stretch up to 12 months. With 50 cardiologists on staff, “we’re talking big numbers if we scale this up.”
Benefits for Manchester Foundation Trust’s NHS doctors
“Human interaction is at the heart of healthcare, what we’re always looking to do is to ask, how can we embrace technology that is going to allow us to have the right interaction with a patient as early as possible?”
Mark Cubbon, the chief executive of the Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, a group of 10 hospitals with more than 30,000 employees. Photo by Chris Welsch for Microsoft.
Pearman is among 150 doctors testing the system at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT), which is the largest integrated trust in the country and has 10 hospitals, two community services and more than 31,000 employees in Manchester and Trafford. This trial is supported by Accenture, which is helping MFT with the evaluation.
The results of the trial have been impressive, said Chief Executive Mark Cubbon, who said the hospitals would be expanding the use of ambient voice technology over the next few weeks.
“The early indications are, with the adoption of this technology, we will be able to see and treat up to a quarter of a million new patients every single year, which is significant,” Cubbon said.
“Human interaction is at the heart of healthcare,” he said. “What we’re always looking to do is to ask, how can we embrace technology that is going to allow us to have the right interaction with a patient as early as possible?”
Pearman said that he is among those who see the potential of Dragon Copilot.
He is quite particular about how he organizes patient information, he said. Dragon Copilot has been able to organize that information and compose letters to “about 80%” of the way he ideally likes them. Customizing Dragon Copilot to match his preferences improved performance significantly.
“It cuts out a lot of the work of making a first draft,” he said.
In his view, efficiency isn’t the only benefit. With Dragon Copilot, he can be more focused on the patient.
“Particularly in the field of cardiology that I work in relating to heart rhythm problems, there are people who have really sensitive stories,” he said. “It’s an emotional subject. So absolutely, it’s important to be present with people in the consult.”
Streamlining digital systems
Ceyda Mogulkoc-Zhuang is the director of electronic patient records (EPR) and digital applications for the Manchester NHS Foundation Trust (MFT).
During the past five years, she has overseen a complete overhaul of the digital systems that manage patient data throughout the 10 hospitals under MFT’s umbrella. Over the years, different teams had adopted their own systems for creating and storing patient records and other data resulting in hundreds of different platforms, Mogulkoc-Zhuang said. This made sharing information complicated.
The hospital wanted to unify its approach, and three years ago it adopted an electronic patient record system. “Because it was bringing together 10 hospitals, not only from a digital footprint perspective but also a transformation of processes, it was a massive undertaking,” she said.
The goal, she said, was always to make the work of the clinicians simpler and more efficient while optimizing the conditions for top-notch patient care. Once integrated with the EPR, Dragon Copilot worked well in the system, which contributed to its selection.
“The pilot program is enabling us to be able to populate the electronic patient record directly without the need for any manual intervention by the clinician,” she said. ‘We are trying to reduce the number of clicks for a clinician logging onto multiple systems, having to copy and paste information from one system to another. And this is exactly what we are achieving with Dragon Copilot.”
The importance of communication in clinical medicine
“One of the points we like to make is that time saved is time spent with the patient. It’s time not spent doing documentation.”
Dr. Henry Morriss helped oversee the pilot program in Manchester that had 150 clinicians using Dragon Copilot to document patient transactions. Photo by Chris Welsch for Microsoft.
Dr. Henry Morriss has a unique perspective on the operations at the Manchester NHS Trust. He is a consultant physician who works in the hospital’s emergency department, and he’s also director of Clinical Informatics, which means he oversees the implementation and use of IT for medical purposes.
“Sometimes I think I’ve picked the right time to do this job because it’s very exciting,” he said. “We’re going to transform how we do medicine.”
Voice technology is part of that transformation, he said. The Trust’s doctors had already been experimenting with ambient voice tools and had tested another system, but they wanted to explore Dragon Copilot after seeing how positively it had been received by doctors in other healthcare systems.
“We heard other clinicians saying it was an offloading of a cognitive burden, and a reduction of administrative time,” Morriss said. “And so we were wary at first; we wanted to make sure we captured the same advantages because all these tools cost money and we want to make sure they are a sound investment.”
“One of the points we like to make is that time saved is time spent with the patient. It’s time not spent doing documentation. So you have, one, that increased engagement with the patient when you’re doing it, but also you’re faster, so you can see the next patient,” Morriss said. “In a system as large as ours, that can add up to a lot of patients.”
Morriss also sees the benefit as a doctor when he is interviewing a patient.
“In the emergency department, you’re seeing the patient fresh off the street,” he said. “All you’ve got is what you can glean by talking to them (…) I’m probably talking for about 10 minutes, which doesn’t sound a lot, but there’s a lot of information which you’ve distilled in that time.”
Using Dragon Copilot preserves that conversation accurately, meaning it can be consulted if there’s a question.
“I now have confidence that I can have a fairly detailed discussion with a patient, knowing in the background it’s all being captured and that I can go back to it,” he said.
Morriss points out that there is potential to capture and use the human voice in service to medicine in novel ways.
He cited the example of a paramedic briefing the attending physician at the emergency ward about what has been observed in a patient who has just been transported. Or in another case, when a team of doctors from different disciplines gathers to consider a complex case. “In all honesty, much of that information is now currently lost. But in the future, that will all be in the record.”
“Clinical medicine is all about communication,” he said. “It’s all about your interaction with the patient and with other colleagues, and what do we use? We use our voice.”
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Chris Welsch is a reporter and photographer based in France covering AI, Innovation and a variety of other topics for Microsoft Source EMEA. He’s recently written about AI-guided driverless cars. Welsch was a staff editor at the International New York Times in Paris and before that a senior reporter and photographer at the Minnesota Star Tribune. Follow him on LinkedIn.
