Autonomous Voice Conversations to Monitor Health & Deliver Virtual Clinical Follow-up

This project will introduce automation of clinical follow-up to enable proactive and timely access to healthcare services for patients, whilst optimising professionals' workload so they can deliver the best, most efficient care.

The lead applicant, Ufonia, is a highly innovative digital health platform based on artificial intelligence technologies that can provide autonomous, voice-based conversation with patients in order to assess their health status. This application builds on a successful Innovate UK Feasibility award made to Ufonia and which met its milestones of technical feasibility and user acceptance of the voice-based platform.

The solution being developed will be applicable and scalable to most healthcare conditions and pathways. The focus of the first deployment will be to optimise the management of patients requiring cataract surgery, because of the scale of escalating demand for cataract surgery, meaning there is an urgent need to make care pathways as effective and efficient as possible.

Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust (BHT), will pilot the first clinical use of the technology. The project is further supported by Oxford AHSN who will provide health economic evaluation and business development (including the Bucks Health and Social Care Ventures Accelerator), the Science and Technology Facilities Council's Hartree Centre who have worked with IBM Watson to support Ufonia's AI development to date, and Oxford University Innovation's Clinical Outcomes Group, who bring academic and business development expertise to the application, licensing and development of patient reported outcome measures.