57817Automated telephone conversations to triage and reassure patients whilst at homeClosedFeasibility StudiesInnovate UKWith the NHS focusing its efforts on managing the frontlines of the Covid-19 crisis, vast numbers of clinical appointments have been delayed or rescheduled. As the country recovers, we face a large and increasing backlog of clinic visits and waiting lists for operations. Understandably, this will create tremendous anxiety for patients both about their conditions and also about being "lost in the system". Administrative teams and clinicians will be under pressure to make sure individuals are not put at risk, and that patients are kept informed about the constantly changing situation. Our solution, Ufonia, delivers autonomous, natural language conversations with patients about their care over the telephone. Ufonia's artificial intelligence driven system can make calls to patients whose care has been postponed, to explain the current plans an organisation or team has for that patient, to answer common queries and to check in on how they're doing. The calls will provide an additional layer of reassurance to patients, whilst allowing teams to get up to date individualised information about each patient's situation and their specific concerns. From the point of view of a patient, this is a normal conversation from any home or mobile phone. Patients will not need to receive any training, access websites, download apps or be given new devices. The system will verify the identity of the individual, and provide a route for questions and concerns to be fed back directly to the clinical team. In contrast to human conducted telephone calls, Ufonia offers the ability to simultaneously and repeatedly contact large groups of patients. This replaces manual calls being made by skilled administrative and clinical staff with a new channel of two way communication. Despite the resource constraints faced by NHS organisations, care teams will have a tool to keep in touch with individuals who otherwise might feel abandoned. The content of the call is captured and analysed to allow care teams to more easily identify patients who may be at risk or who are particularly concerned for further review. The technology will initially be trialled at Oxford University Hospitals Foundation Trust. Patients, clinicians and administrative professionals will be involved in the process of refining the conversations and developing the platform. Following a successful pilot it will be available across the NHS in time to help hospitals manage the ongoing challenges to services created by COVID-19. The extension of this award will take insights form the first phase and enable the system to supports calls across multiple clinical teams. It will additionally support follow-on calls from human members of staff so that the experience for patients and professionals is integrated. This is especially import at this challenging time when changes in the delivery of clinical care in response to the pandemic are occurring on a weekly basis.