One system, real outcomes: the NHS GenAI story

From CommunityLIVE by Hyland: AI that helps clinicians and patients, today

I sat down with Dr. Shankar Sridharan, baby heart doctor, Chief Clinical Information Officer at Great Ormond Street Hospital, and National Clinical Lead for AI at NHS England. We spoke about taking AI out of pilots and into frontline care.

Scale and design

- The NHS has run the largest generative AI program with ambient voice across nine care settings so far.

- 17,000 patients included with a staged, scientific approach.

- Phase zero in the innovation lab, then professional actors and doctors in a safe test EHR, then real clinicians with real patients, then scale.

Measured outcomes

- 25% increase in direct care time.

- In Accident and Emergency, documentation time reduced by 51%.

- Independent analysis by York Health Economics Consortium shows each A&E doctor can see at least one extra patient per shift.

- At NHS scale, that is 9,279 additional patients per day, a capacity benefit north of 650 million with a further documentation benefit of 160 million.

Why now

- Algorithmic AI needed high digital maturity and often lived in imaging.

- Generative AI can work with unstructured data and needs operationalisation more than heavy new infrastructure.

How to operationalise

- People, process, technology in that order.

- Train clinicians. Integrate into workflow. Measure time to decision, accuracy, and rework, not just model scores.

Governance and assurance

- Build at the speed of trust.

Clear governance for data, cyber, and clinical safety, and assurance so the public can see how risk is managed.

- Move beyond pilotitis

Tiny pilots with no owner and no scale plan slow us down.

Create a national plan with strategic delivery, then expand by use case.

- What good looks like in practice

Ambient voice reduces documentation load so clinicians focus on patients.

Better throughput and clinicians who feel less drained at the end of a shift.

The next step

- Use AI as the tenth voice in multidisciplinary teams.

- Not to replace clinicians, but to widen perspective, surface risks, and nudge better decisions.

As Shankar put it, the clinician is the superhero. AI is the cape.

This is how AI earns trust in healthcare. Results first. Safety always. Scale with discipline.

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