Accelerating successful and safe adoption of ambient voice technology across health and care

Summary

Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex (KSS) has led a coordinated programme of work to support the safe, evidence‑based adoption of Ambient Voice Technology (AVT). This includes two independent evaluations of AVT tools in real‑world settings, and the publication of an implementation guide for health and care settings. We have supported adoption and spread by sharing our findings at industry events and launching an AVT newsletter.

Challenge

Health and care professionals spend a substantial proportion of their time on documentation and administrative tasks. This reduces the time available for direct interaction with patients and people drawing on care and support and adds to workforce pressure.

AVT was identified in the ’10 Year Health Plan for England’ as a solution to this burden by capturing and structuring notes from conversations. However, adoption across health and care systems has been cautious.

Health and care organisations have highlighted a lack of independent evidence, uncertainty around safety and governance, and limited practical guidance on how to implement AVT effectively in different care settings.

Approach

We combined independent evaluation, system engagement and the development of practical resources to encourage the successful spread and adoption of evidenced AVT tools.

We commissioned and oversaw independent evaluations of two AVT tools:

• TORTUS, evaluated in four different health settings in Kent and Medway (primary care, social care, community paediatrics and acute outpatients)
• Beam Notes (formerly Magic Notes), evaluated in adult social care settings

The evaluations focused on the impact on the workforce and patients, as well as learnings from the implementation across different settings. This was an at scale and at speed pilot.

We provided evaluation governance, supported participating sites and ensured findings were reported in a clear, accessible way for system decision‑makers.

Building on the findings, we developed an implementation guide, a transferable model that shares our learning on information governance, clinical safety, workforce engagement and change management.

Impact

Health and care system impact

The eight-week assessment of Beam Notes with Kent County Council’s Adult Social Care team revealed that AVT improved timesaving and accuracy:

• Improvements in the time spent writing up notes, with an average reduction of 2.7 hours per assessment (48%). This enabled staff to complete their work within core hours more often, improving staff work-life balance.
• Supervisors reported that fewer amendments to reports were needed due to improved quality and consistency.
• While using Magic Notes, staff gave positive feedback on the quality of conversations they had with people drawing on care and support, with scores increasing from 6.8/10 to 9.1/10.
• The time taken to submit assessments reduced by 49% on average, going from 5 days to 3 days.

As a result of the findings, Kent County Council purchased Beam Notes for use across the wider adult social care team.

The pilot of TORTUS ambient voice technology across Kent and Medway demonstrated that TORTUS can deliver benefits of both increased efficiency and staff wellbeing in real-world scenarios.

Importantly, it provided evidence‑based insights into effective and ineffective approaches to implementing AVT in healthcare settings, which informed the development of our implementation guide.

Economic impact

In adult social care, the evaluation of Magic Notes found that administrative time during assessments was reduced by almost 50%. These time savings indicate potential productivity gains and cost avoidance if adopted more widely. By supporting effective implementation, the implementation guide helps reduce the risk of ineffective investment in digital tools

Spread and scalability

Our guide, Are you listening carefully? How to implement Ambient Voice Technology in health and care, has been viewed over 600 times. This shows demand for practical advice based on evidence and experience. To further support spread and adoption, we have presented the guide and our evaluation findings to our system partners at industry including as part of the Royal Society of Medicine digital series and as part of a webinar series with the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) supported incubator for AI and Digital Health, as well as securing media coverage in relevant industry outlets.

Our work demonstrates that AVT can be applied across different care settings when supported by evidence, governance and practical implementation support. The approach supports scalability by enabling other organisations to learn from existing evidence rather than starting from scratch.

Find out more

Get in touch if you’d like to find out more about our work in AVT or if you’d like to discuss implementation.