From GP practices to acute care, hospitals, diagnostics, and imaging, the UK healthcare system is complex for patients and professionals alike. Patient journeys are touched by a vast number of people, all with their own expertise and unique roles to play along the way. In many cases, journeys go beyond the boundaries of the NHS, moving into private healthcare or complementary services like social care.
As a result, there is significant pressure to maintain effective collaboration, eliminate bottlenecks, and streamline administrative processes wherever possible. Day-to-day, healthcare providers encounter three major challenges around the flow of information and, ultimately, the flow of patients from first contact to diagnosis, treatment, and recovery.
Integrated, effective technology has the ability to help overcome these challenges – and AI-powered, highly accurate speech recognition specifically provides a single holistic solution that results in improvements across the board.
#1 The unexpected is to be expected
The nature of healthcare is that things change fast. Few of us would have predicted a devastating pandemic at the end of 2019. Recent leaps forward in AI with the likes of ChatGPT have the potential to redefine how people, including medical professionals, interact with the world around them. The NHS is also undergoing its own transformation, from a strong digital roadmap to evolving models of care like Hospital at Home.
Meanwhile, Virtual Clinics are emerging as a significant way to reduce the Delayed Transfer of Care (DTOC). The NHS has begun to introduce virtual wards, allowing more people to get the care they need, in a home environment, not in hospital, which also helps to alleviate pressure. This now creates significant change in how care is delivered and how teams work with patient data.
The need for adaptability is significant. Taking radiology as an example, a study from February 2023 describes an urgent need to make radiology ‘antifragile’ – to increase resilience and adaptability, so we can thrive in an uncertain world. Some key considerations are building capacity, enabling new ways to collaborate, and prioritising information quickly and effectively.
Integrated speech recognition technology, like Augnito, helps with this challenge by empowering radiologists with more flexibility in the way they work – from transcribing reports on the go, to directly capturing information in clinical systems using speech. Speech also helps connect increasingly complex workflows across the patient journey, whether that’s in a clinical back-end, or, surfaced to other teams in different areas of the organisation. Beyond saving time for an individual healthcare professional, speech recognition transforms the availability and accuracy of clinical information. At the same time, the ability to capture information faster enables a greater degree of analysis, spotlighting the most critical information to anyone across the continuum of care.
#2 Incomplete information impairs decisions
If it wasn’t documented, it didn’t happen. That’s the reality of taking patients through journeys that are complex, often non-linear, and involve the work of multiple individuals, Trusts, private providers, and care partners. In this fast moving environment, information capture and sharing is pivotal.
- If it was just a thought, it wasn’t documented
- If it wasn’t signed off, it wasn’t documented
- It was misplaced, it wasn’t documented
- If it wasn’t saved, it wasn’t documented
- If the detail was lost, it wasn’t documented
- And if it wasn’t documented, it didn’t happen.
Wherever humans are involved in transcribing and capturing information, that information is at risk. Misplaced documents, typing errors, and incorrect data are a considerable challenge at every touchpoint. And, as information is shared across disciplines or among teams, this risk multiplies. With multiple single points of failure, a report that was accurate in the first instance misplaced or lost, affecting dozens of steps along the patient journey, with back tracking and retrieval a difficult, time-consuming task.
Healthcare has an economic and humanistic value. Gaps and failings come with financial and human impact—in some cases, irreversibly. Augnito is designed to close the gaps between medical professionals, multiple healthcare systems, the reporting technology, and their colleagues. Interoperability is key, with speech connecting disparate systems right along the patient journey and creating a single version of the truth. With highly accurate transcription available without the delays or risks of manual handling, only then can everyone make decisions based on the full, up-to-the-minute story – with complete confidence in its accuracy and validity.
#3 Harnessing collective experience and expertise
By definition, Multi-Disciplinary Teams (MDTs) are there to provide a breadth of expertise across distinct areas, each with an important role to play in patient outcomes. But close collaboration across these teams is made more difficult when ways of working and communicating aren’t unified.
A major challenge of any new technology in healthcare is adoption – especially when considering the differing budgets of those across the health and social care system. If a new technology isn’t within reach for under-funded mental health teams or understaffed GP surgeries, its impact will always be limited.
That’s why Augnito doesn’t just provide always-available, accurate speech recognition and transcription. It’s built to be widely accessible, from the low complexity nature of a cloud-hosted solution to a simple subscription model with no need for capital expenditure or complex infrastructure changes.
Holistic improvements to how people work
Technology alone isn’t lifesaving. It’s the unique expertise and talent of people across healthcare that make better patient outcomes possible. Voice-driven AI speech recognition influences outcomes in an integrated, holistic way by focusing on the needs of the people that deliver care every day.
Developed in partnership with medical professionals, Augnito is tailored to the biggest challenges our healthcare system is facing, from rising backlogs to surging DTOC figures and a widespread bed shortage. Delivering incremental improvements to the speed, accuracy and quality of reporting and communication, Augnito brings new efficiency to everyone who touches the patient journey.
Learn more about Augnito
Augnito is already impacting the patient journey through our growing list of UK resellers and technology partners. Request an Augnito Spectra evaluation version to see its benefits first-hand.