AI and volunteers are helping Warwickshire hospitals save £36,000 a week

VOLUNTEERS super-charged with technology are tackling missed hospital appointments and slashing waiting times. They’re part of a new system rolling out across South Warwickshire University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (SWFT) and George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust, which aims to save millions of pounds – and lives.

Deep Medical Schedules uses artificial intelligence (AI) to identify patients at high risk of not turning up to their appointments or cancelling at short notice.

By phoning in advance, volunteers pinpoint anything patients need help with, such as transport, language barriers, parking fees or someone to greet them once they arrive.

Appointments can be re-arranged for more convenient times – for example evening and weekend slots for those who can’t take time off work during the day.

Early results across the Warwickshire hospitals show attendances have jumped by a third (33 per cent), while there’s been a 29 per cent fall in no-shows.

This translates into savings of £36,000 a week – almost £2m a year.

The AI system, dreamt up by an NHS doctor and a data scientist, taps into the hospital’s back-up booking system so instead of appointments going to waste, they’re reassigned to someone else on the waiting list.

The software, which predicts likely missed appointments via algorithms and anonymised data, identified high risk of no-shows as seven per cent at the two Warwickshire trusts.

Given there are 700,000 outpatient appointments a year across SWFT and George Eliot, that equates to 49,000 missed appointments a year.

Pinpointing and helping those struggling to get to appointments has life-changing potential with conditions such as cancer, where missing diagnostic and treatment can dramatically affect the outcome.

The company behind the AI system, Deep Medical, teamed up with NHS volunteer charity Helpforce to train volunteers across both trusts how to use the AI system.

Dr Benyamin Deldar, who co-founded Deep Medical with David Hanbury in 2020, told the Herald: “It’s about how we can use AI to improve the existing services we’re delivering. It’s the same populations at risk of missing their appointment, and when they miss their appointment, they have worse outcomes. This system, enabling us to use that time well and put someone else in, has a huge impact in terms of how many patients we can see.

“We do targeted outreach and use that to make better scheduling decisions – it’s a simple way for us to get through the backlog quickly.”

He said the pilot with SWFT and George Eliot has delivered “exceptional results” and can be used across all departments including radiology and surgery. In one hospital it identified 400 patients, all frail, and each attending 28 appointments a year. Volunteers offered extra support such as food, drink and companionship and efforts were also made to condense the number of visits.

Describing volunteers in the NHS as “untapped potential”, he added: “They’re the best people to solve this because they’re from the community and they understand the community.”

Dr Deldar said the response from medics and patients at both trusts has been “really positive”.

“The key thing is how we get the millions of people waiting for outpatient appointments into the millions of missed appointments and short notice cancellations,” he added.

With a six-month pilot with Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust set to save £27.5m a year, the AI system is being extended to 10 trusts. No-shows are a huge problem for the NHS. Of 125m outpatient appointments across the NHS in England last year, eight million (6.4 per cent) were not attended, costing the NHS £1.5 billion a year.

Find out more at www.deep-medical.ai/