The hospital trust that serves Brighton and Hove has started to use AI (artificial intelligence) in two departments, the interim chief executive said today (Thursday 20 November).
Andy Heeps spoke about using AI at a meeting of the University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust’s Council of Governors.
Dr Heeps said that the emergency department (ED) consultants at the trust were trialling AI to take patient notes and radiologists were using it to help read patient scans.
He said that another senior NHS official had recently told a conference that trials elsewhere had shown that AI saved time for individual staff members but had not yet shown any improvement in productivity.
One of those present at the Council of Governors meeting, in Worthing, said that the trial in question had been looking at how safe it was to use AI rather than how productive.
Dr Heeps said: “There’s still a bit of hype and hope and we need to work out how to turn it into something tangible.”
He was answering a question from Brighton and Hove public governor Frances McCabe, who previously ran the independent watchdog Healthwatch Brighton and Hove.
The trust runs more than half a dozen hospitals across Sussex including the Royal Sussex County Hospital, the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital and the Sussex Eye Hospital, all in Brighton,
It also runs Worthing Hospital, St Richard’s, in Chichester, and the Princess Royal Hospital, in Haywards Heath.
From the experience my elderly Mother has just had in RSCH, AI can only be an improvement.
Oh no, exceptionally bad timing as well with how chaotic hospital tends to be this time of year. I hope she’s doing well and recovering.