Intelligent Navigation using AI
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Intelligent Navigation using AI to bust waiting times for urgent healthcare - a study of staff, stakeholder and user experience
IRAS ID
358106
Contact name
Catherine Pope
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Oxford/Research Governance, Ethics & Assurance
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 11 months, 31 days
Research summary
Delays harm patients who require urgent care and long waiting times lower staff morale while reducing public satisfaction in the NHS. Demand for urgent and same day care is rising as the population ages and more people are living with multiple health conditions. A growing number of people awaiting planned treatments or hospital admission end up needing urgent care because their health deteriorates. These patients need to be assessed and managed more quickly.
Currently, systems used by patients to access same day or urgent care make decisions based on a patient’s current or ‘presenting’ symptoms, and cannot take account of patients’ medical history or overall health. Yet patient records, held by GPs, hospitals and other services can provide vital extra information to help assess how urgently patients need to be seen.
Our project will evaluate a system that we call Intelligent Navigation. Instead of relying on patients, or receptionists/call handlers to run through a set list of questions, Intelligent Navigation uses AI (artificial intelligence) and a text-based app (similar to WhatsApp or SMS messaging) accessed from the NHS app, to help prioritise patients based on their symptoms and medical history ensuring the most urgent cases are seen first. Intelligent Navigation combines a medically approved tool (Visiba Triage) with AI-based software developed by Johns Hopkins University in America that can analyse medical history and health data quickly. (The Johns Hopkins system has been used in this country for many years.) We want to see if Intelligent Navigation can reduce waiting times for urgent care.
When patients contact their general practice seeking urgent same day care they will be asked to use the text-based app to assess their symptoms and look at their health records. If they cannot use the app then a trained receptionist will navigate the questions with them. The patient will answer a series of questions using text-chat on a mobile phone to provide information about their symptoms/problem and Intelligent Navigation will quickly assess them and in the background review their records to create a summary that goes straight to the clinical team. Intelligent Navigation produces a summary that explains what is wrong with the patient, how urgently they need to be seen or called back, and includes extra medical details that the clinical team (who may be doctors, paramedics, pharmacists, or practice nurses) need to know. In this project, the AI-generated summary will also pull through contextual data from the Electronic Patient Record System, specifically the Johns Hopkins ACG score. This score will allow the clinician to rapidly triage, knowing the underlying complexity of the patient, without having to consult them or their record. The whole process of assessing the patient takes less than 3 minutes.
We want to look at whether Intelligent Navigation can reduce waiting times for urgent care, improve continuity, and whether it provides value for money. We will develop and roll out this new system across the NHS Wealden Ridge Partnership and study how it is introduced and how patients, staff and stakeholders experience it. We will focus on the patient, staff and stakeholder experience, acceptability and ease of use. We will carry out surveys of patients and staff using questionnaires, conduct interviews with staff and stakeholders, analyse documents and hold workshops to review and discuss what we have learned.REC name
North East - York Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
26/NE/0095
Date of REC Opinion
27 May 2026
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion