One of the UK’s largest mental health trusts rolled out AI technology across its services after a pilot supported clinicians spend less time on paperwork and more time with patients.
Overview
Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust (CNWL), provides services across a large and diverse geographical footprint, delivering care across North West London, Milton Keynes and beyond, with services spanning urban, suburban and rural communities, as well as a number of specialist services commissioned across London and nationally. They have become one of the first mental health trusts in the country to scale AI Ambient Voice Technology (AVT) across services.
The trust’s Anthem AVT programme, which began as a clinician-led pilot in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services in 2023, is now used by 409 clinicians, an increase of 22 licenses per month on average since February 2025, reducing clinical admin by up to 68%.
The Challenge
Before AVT was introduced, neurodevelopment assessments typically took between two and three hours, followed by up to two more hours of admin and report writing. Clinicians regularly finished notes after work, while delays in paperwork contributed to growing waiting lists, staff stress and increased sickness absence.
The Solution
The technology captures conversations during appointments and structures notes directly into clinical templates in real time, reducing the need for clinicians to spend hours writing up reports after appointments.
Tecknuovo worked with CNWL to refine how the technology worked in live clinical settings, improve rollout and governance processes, and help build a dedicated in-house Digital Health team to support wider adoption across the trust.
The Results
After scaling the programme, productivity increased by 17% within six months – equivalent to around six extra patients per clinician each month – while every clinician surveyed said the technology reduced documentation time.
Clinicians involved in the programme said the technology had reduced stress levels and allowed them to focus more fully on patients during appointments, rather than manually capturing every detail. Staff turnover at pilot sites fell from as high as 40% to 12%, while sickness absence reduced from 2.04% to 0.87%.
Sarah Boyd, Director of Digital Strategy and Programmes, CNWL NHS
“The use of AVT has been genuinely life changing for our clinicians and has such a positive impact on patient care. This wouldn’t have been possible without the exceptional project management team going over and above to operationalise the roll out of this technology, in a modern and efficient way. Working in collaboration with our Digital Clinicians, this project is probably the most well managed and clinically successful projects we have ever delivered.”
