NHS trials AI in Birmingham to prevent thousands of GP visits in effort to tackle waiting lists
NHS teams in Birmingham are trialing an algorithm that could prevent thousands of hospital or GP visits.
It can predict the top 5% of patients likely to be at risk of attending or being admitted to hospital, so that staff can check in with them to offer preventative social care options.
Over the next two years, the scheme is aiming to prevent 4,500 unnecessary trips to A&E, as well as 17,000 overnight hospital stays and 23,000 GP appointments.
Chris Holt, from Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS, said: "Using data more smartly and harnessing the power of AI is now crucial in supporting the highest risk patients who, with the right support, can stay well at home.
"By identifying those complex patients – most likely to attend or be admitted to hospital over winter – it means we can step in much sooner and give them support that’s personalised for them."
It emerged last week that 7.7 million people are on NHS waiting lists in England, the highest since records began in 2007.
Amanda Pritchard, chief executive of NHS England, said: "NHS staff across the country are already feeling the pressure with record demand for A&E and ambulance services – and so these new innovations being rolled out by NHS teams are an extra and welcome addition to our winter toolkit, with more call handlers and more beds already in place."
A number of measures were announced over the summer to put the NHS on a stable footing for the coming winter.
These included NHS England planning to give cash incentives to local hospitals that "overachieve" on performance measures such as A&E waiting times and ambulance handover times.
It also said it would introduce social care "traffic control centres" to help speed up hospital discharges, as well as having more ambulances on the road and extra hospital beds.
In September the Government announced a £200 million "winter resilience" fund, while last month the use of virtual wards – also known as hospitals at home – was expanded to patients with heart failure.
Virtual wards allow patients to remain at home while receiving care from clinical staff, who use apps or wearable technology to monitor them remotely.
Matt Neligan, NHS England’s director of system transformation, said using data across integrated care systems provides the health service with a "much deeper insight into the full range of needs for different population groups and the drivers of health inequalities."
He added: "We are now seeing the NHS and its partners across the country able to use tools and techniques like AI and a population health management approach to identify people at highest risk of admission and support them before they need hospital treatment.
"We’re increasingly able to find those individuals early and offer targeted, preventative and personalised healthcare."
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