Heidi’s latest UK Impact Report highlights the growing role of ambient voice technology across the NHS, revealing how AI-powered clinical documentation tools are helping reduce burnout, free up frontline capacity and improve patient interactions at scale.
Heidi’s UK Impact Report, ‘Performance in Practice’ reveals what its ambient voice technology (AVT) has delivered for NHS workers: over four million hours of clinical capacity returned to frontline teams, an 86% cut in documentation time and 95% of clinicians reporting reduced burnout – a significant step toward tackling the health system’s administration crisis.
The report draws on data from more than 15 million patient visits and arrives at a pivotal moment. NHS England has set a clear expectation that integrated care boards and providers will adopt AVT at pace from April 2026, in line with national guidance on safe AI deployment and the Medium Term Planning Framework. Heidi’s Impact Report shows what that ambition looks like in practice and who is driving it. These results have been led by clinicians themselves, with Heidi now supporting over half a million patient interactions every week across the UK.
Undivided attention for patients across the UK
The ‘Performance in Practice’ report, drawing on independent service evaluations and real-world usage data from NHS and independent providers, shows that Heidi’s AI Scribe unlocked up to £95,200 in annualised clinical capacity in a single Same Day Emergency Care pilot, with patient satisfaction rates of 90% as clinicians become less ‘screen-bound’.
In other services it has helped deliver a 99% reduction in correspondence backlogs, including one Emergency Department that reduced discharge letter turnaround from 9.03 days to 2.6 minutes. In doing so, Heidi returns clinician time to the point of care, unlocking real system capacity and improving patient experience without increasing headcount.
Dr Hannah Allen, Chief Medical Officer at Heidi and General Practitioner, said: “The data in this report reflects what we hear from clinicians across the NHS every day. Clinicians want to give patients their full attention but feel squeezed by rising demand and an ever-growing documentation burden.
“When AVT is introduced into real workflows with proper support, they can finally look up from the screen, listen properly and still finish their notes on time. This is not about replacing clinical judgement. It is about freeing up clinicians’ cognitive load so that they can focus on patients, not paperwork.”
Delivering impact for clinicians and patients across care settings
Throughout the UK’s healthcare system, Heidi delivers consistent gains in capacity. In high-throughput hospital services, such as Emergency Departments, Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC) and outpatients, sites have typically seen around an 85% reduction in documentation time, with the Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust’s SDEC and outpatients’ units freeing up 221 hours of clinical capacity. Another SDEC clinic saw a reduction in a backlog of 2,700 clinic letters to fewer than 200 in just four months, representing an estimated £139,000 in savings.
In primary care, Modality Partnership, a GP super partnership, halved its documentation time during consultations by using Heidi, with a further 61% reduction in paperwork completed outside of contracted hours. The benefits for GPs were clear; documentation-related stress dropped by over half (58%) and work-life balance improved by 45%. Stress reduction was even higher (67%) for another North East London Integrated Care Board (ICB). Across localities, primary care patients were comfortable with the use of AI in their consultation, with many reporting an improved rapport with their GP.
Community, hospice and independent providers saw similar patterns. One frailty team reported cuts of up to 12 minutes per consultation, contributing to a projected annual saving of £313,484 and a £5.10 return for every £1 spent in one multidisciplinary team. In other independent settings, out-of-hours documentation was almost eliminated, falling from an average of 25 minutes to around 25 seconds per day.
Dr Thomas Kelly, Co Founder and CEO of Heidi, said: “AVT has moved from promise to practice. For years we have talked about the documentation crisis in the NHS. This report shows, using real services and real data, that this technology can turn that crisis into recoverable time for patients and staff.
Across different care settings, we see the same pattern. When clinicians have access to a reliable AI partner that fits the way they already work, documentation time falls, backlogs collapse and burnout eases, while patients feel more heard, not less. As the NHS moves to deploy AVT at pace, this report offers a practical blueprint of what good looks like, and how to keep clinicians and patients at the centre.”
Building an AI care partner for the whole clinical day
The Impact Report reflects Heidi’s evolution from an AI scribe into an AI Care Partner; a connected clinical platform that acts on context to anticipate and progress patient care. Heidi’s Scribe captures consultations, builds notes and generates every downstream document from that single conversation. Heidi Remote extends that capability across busy wards and rural clinics through a hardware device. Heidi Evidence answers clinical questions at the point of care, drawing on trusted guidelines and each organisation’s own protocols.
Heidi Comms handles routine patient coordination across voice, text, and chat.
