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The King’s Fund is calling for a national strategy on ambient voice technology (AVT) after analysis found it could transform patient care, improve working conditions for NHS staff and strengthen the UK’s sovereign AI capabilities.

According to the report, ‘Seizing a Rare Opportunity: scaling ambient voice technology in the NHS’, AVT uses AI to listen to clinical conversations and automatically generate outputs such as consultation notes, referral letters and other clinical documentation.

AVT is currently used primarily by doctors, but interest is growing among nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists and social care staff.

The report draws on a roundtable involving patient representatives, NHS leaders and industry experts, alongside a review of existing research and interviews with NHS staff, to explore the opportunities and challenges associated with wider deployment.

They found that AVT had the potential to reduce administrative burden, cut overtime and ease cognitive workload, allowing clinicians to spend more time focusing on patients.

However, the analysis warns that structural barriers could limit the benefits unless adoption is supported by wider digital transformation.

Among the key challenges identified are electronic patient record (EPR) systems that do not integrate effectively with AVT, forcing clinicians to manually transfer information between systems, and a lack of transparent performance metrics to demonstrate the technology’s real-world impact.

Dr Pritesh Mistry, fellow in digital technologies at The King’s Fund, said: “We know there is exceptional excitement about AVT among NHS leaders and the workforce.

As a result, the market is racing ahead. It’s essential to recognize the technology will not stand still, and neither should the system’s ambition for it.

The report argues that a national strategy is needed to avoid fragmented adoption across the NHS, support interoperability and ensure lessons from early adopters are shared nationally.

By addressing these challenges, the NHS can unlock the full potential of AVT to improve patient care and reduce the administrative burden on clinicians.

The report’s findings are significant, and the NHS should take note of the opportunities and challenges presented by AVT, including its potential to improve patient care through more accurate and efficient clinical documentation.