![\"Lead](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/0_hrr_161025AI_04.jpg\")
Lead chest reporting radiographer Andy Creeden (left) and consultant radiographer Dan Togher(Image: LeicestershireLive)<\/p>\nA number of trials are underway at the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS TrustLead chest reporting radiographer Andy Creeden (left) and consultant radiographer Dan Togher(Image: LeicestershireLive)<\/p>\n
From reading X-rays to writing letters, artificial intelligence is transforming care at Leicester hospitals<\/a>. Developments in AI mean it is better placed than ever to support the NHS in delivering for patients and the city\u2019s three hospitals are at forefront of that innovation.<\/p>\n A number of trials are underway at the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust<\/a>, which will drive improvements for both residents and staff. The technology is being used throughout the trust\u2019s day-to-day work with the ultimate aim of freeing up doctors to spend more time focused on what they are really there for \u2013 looking after patients.<\/p>\n Some of those trials could become a permanent part of trust practices from next year. LeicestershireLive<\/a> sat down with the hospitals\u2019 chief digital information officer, William Monaghan, and one of the medical teams incorporating AI in their work to learn more about how the technology is being used and what it means for patients.<\/p>\n Mr Monaghan told us he hopes integrating AI into ways of working at the trust will \u201ctransform the experience of being a patient\u201d at UHL and make it \u201cmore fun\u201d to work there by allowing staff to focus more on patients and less on admin.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cWe really want AI to be part of the solution to make it easier and safer to deliver and receive care. We will be able to have far more support for clinicians to make decisions faster and better.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it will mean that we can streamline the administration around the patient<\/a>. It probably is quite frustrating when people need to contact us and they have to wait on the phone, they don\u2019t know where they are in the waiting list, and they seem to get different information at different appointments. I think we can transform the experience of being a patient of UHL.\u201d<\/p>\n He added that AI now serves three main uses at Leicester hospitals<\/a>. Firstly, it is being employed to support clinical decision-making, including through training for those new to their roles.<\/p>\n In radiology, a new way of working is being tried out, with AI being used to read lung X-rays. The technology seeks out abnormalities in the scans and highlights them for the clinician.<\/p>\n It is also being used to detect suspected strokes in scans, to analyse images to diagnose skin cancer, help clinicians visualise and plan treatments for complex heart conditions, and to integrate information around kidney filtration.<\/p>\n Lead chest reporting radiographer Andy Creeden and consultant radiographer Dan Togher are part of the team involved in the lung X-ray trial. They told LeicestershireLive that the technology is currently assisting with around 10,000 X-rays a month.<\/p>\n Mr Creeden said: \u201cThere\u2019s a lot going on on the chest X-ray. There are all sorts of bits that might be normal or might not be normal, depending on the patient, and some lung nodules, particularly, can be really, really subtle, maybe you only see them in the benefit of hindsight once you know that they\u2019re there.<\/p>\n \u201cThe system is helping us just to avoid anything slipping through the net. So, it\u2019s a safety net. It\u2019s not doing the report itself; we just remove some of that scope for human error.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s that second set of eyes that maybe just catches that 1 in 1000 that might otherwise slip through the net.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the biggest benefits of the technology is that it is able to prioritise cases based on potential urgency, where consultants typically work through them in date order, Mr Creeden added.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cAI will look at it (the X-ray) and if it sees something that it thinks might be a critical finding, something that needs dealing with immediately, or that might be a suggestion of cancer, then it will pull that X-ray to the top of a reporting list.<\/p>\n \u201cTo get the results of the chest X-ray might take up to a week normally, but using the AI to pick out which patients might have cancer on the basis of their X-ray, then they\u2019ll potentially be reported that day or the next day.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s still scope for improvement, however, and the UHL team<\/a> regularly feeds back to Harrison AI, the company behind the system, so changes can be made to future versions. Mr Togher told us he wanted to see the tool compare past and present patient X-rays as a possible next step.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cI always say that the best tool for reporting a chest X-ray is having a previous chest X-ray because every patient is different, their anatomy is different. If they\u2019ve got previous pathologies, that would explain current findings, for example.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, Leicester\u2019s got high incidence of TB.<\/a> Patients that come back that have had TB in the past, you\u2019ll see scarring, for example, on the chest X-ray because that\u2019s just part of the process.<\/p>\n \u201cAI will pick that up as an abnormality because it\u2019s looking at that chest X-ray as a standalone X-ray. So, I think having that previous [version] would maybe potentially help.\u201d<\/p>\n The second use of AI at local hospitals is in care administration, with the trust investigating how it can be used to book appointments, schedule operations, and administer waiting lists. One of the big tests currently underway at Leicester hospitals is a system called Ambient Voice, which is being used to generate clinical letters following patient consultations.<\/p>\n Mr Monaghan said: \u201cIf you\u2019ve ever had a hospital appointment, you\u2019ll know at the end when you leave the room, previously the consultant would have sat and dictated the letter with \u2018I saw this individual today, this was their complaint, this is my plan of management and these are the drugs or the procedures that I\u2019m planning to do or change for that patient\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat the Ambient AI does is effectively that process. So, it listens to the consultation, it identifies who the doctor is, who the patient is, and then provides a version of that letter automatically for the clinician to say \u2018yep, that\u2019s what I would do\u2019 or for them to make some tweaks.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s doing something that previously the clinician would have had to do, and it\u2019s saving them a significant amount of time by doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr Monaghan said the trust estimates the staff using it are saving around 30 minutes per appointment. He added: \u201cPeople are actually able to have a better quality of life when they\u2019re at work, as more of the administration is being done by technology. [And] that means that they can focus on the thing that they\u2019re really good at, which is looking after patients, and worrying less about things like recording stuff on the system.\u201d<\/p>\n Finally, the trust is also using AI for back office work such as managing payroll for staff and checking the thousands of invoices a week it receives from suppliers, helping them \u201cspeed up all of the processes that [the hospitals] have to do in order to function\u201d.<\/p>\n While AI can improve care, it also comes with risks if safeguards are not in place. Mr Monaghan stressed that it was a tool to support doctor-led care rather than a replacement for this.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cThe AI is in a support role, not a decision-making role. So there\u2019s always this functionality that we call \u2018human in the loop\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is always a human as part of that process, and that human is the person who has the clinical authority to make that decision. They hold a professional registration. This isn\u2019t about us dumbing down the care that people get.\u201d<\/p>\n The processes around deciding which AI to introduce are also rigorous, with the members of two organisations \u2013 Eurotrain and the AI Governance Office \u2013 which set \u201creally high\u201d standards around the technology\u2019s use, Mr Monaghan added.<\/p>\n He continued: \u201cBefore anything goes live, it goes through a thing called a data privacy impact assessment. We absolutely understand and walk through where the data is held, how the data is used by the AI and what data is kept by the AI.<\/p>\n \u201cIf a supplier can\u2019t transparently talk us through that process and we can\u2019t be confident that the data resides within the UK and we can\u2019t be confident that the use of that data fits in line with GDPR and some of that other kind of information governance stuff, we won\u2019t progress with that trial.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr Monaghan added: \u201cWe\u2019re putting things in for sort of short pilot periods and then saying \u2018yes, that works, let\u2019s carry on\u2019 or \u2018no, that didn\u2019t work, let\u2019s try something else\u2019. Probably about 40 per cent of our pilots that we\u2019ve tried, we\u2019ve decided not to carry on with, either because they didn\u2019t save the clinicians as much time as we thought they would or the thing that we thought that bit of technology was doing wasn\u2019t actually doing as well as the clinicians<\/a> themselves were able to do.<\/p>\n \u201cWe rely a lot on our clinical team\u2019s feedback to say \u2018oh this AI is very effective in this area\u2019 or \u2018actually this isn\u2019t working very well and, in effect, it\u2019s slowing me down rather than speeding me up.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr Monaghan said the trust is hoping to roll out some of the new AI uses across the hospitals as a whole from next year. This includes the Ambient Voice system, with UHL thought to have issued the \u201clargest procurement\u201d for the tool in the NHS. Patients may also see their appointments scheduled by AI from next year, as well as receive phone calls from the new systems.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cFor me, it\u2019s really exciting and I think it genuinely will make it better to be a patient of UHL over the next one to five years.<\/p>\n \u201cBut it\u2019s really important that we do it right and we do it responsibly. We\u2019re going as fast as we can, as safely as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A number of trials are underway at the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS TrustLead chest reporting radiographer Andy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,2195,83251,83252,83253,104,2207,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-207389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-employment","tag-glenfield-hospital","tag-leicester-hospitals","tag-leicester-royal-infirmary","tag-nhs","tag-people","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"UHL](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/0_hrr_161025AI_02.jpg\")
UHL chief digital information officer William Monaghan(Image: LeicestershireLive)<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/0_hrr_161025AI_03.jpg\")
A mocked-up AI reading of an X-ray(Image: LeicestershireLive)<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/0_hrr_161025AI.jpg\")
A mocked up AI reading of an X-ray(Image: University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust)<\/p>\n