Event summary

This conversation really highlighted what a big opportunity this represents if we get it right. We brought together nurses, digital leaders, and national policy representatives to explore what AVT really means for nurses and nursing practice. With over 160 participants at peak attendance, it’s safe to say nurses are really getting ready to maximise the opportunity. I loved the description one of the panellists used about AVT – there had been an “explosion if interest” in their Trust.  This is what many of us who have been involved in technology-enabled change have been striving for over the years, i.e. a technology that clinicians want, and see benefit from.  Our challenge now is how can we do this at speed and ensure appropriate safety and governance.

Overview

Overall, the discussions highlighted strong enthusiasm for AVT as a technology that can help reduce administrative burden, support staff wellbeing, and most importantly support the essence of nursing, i.e. being present with the patient.  That said, there were some cautionary thoughts around AVT – the need for it to be adopted carefully, with robust clinical safety and governance. This caution was definitely not a call to slow down the pace of adoption, rather it raised the question of how we best work collectively from local level through to national level, and across all areas of nursing, to develop and implement these safety and governance frameworks as quickly as possible, and deliver the benefits of AVT to clinicians and patients.

Key messages

Participants described AVT as a technology with genuine potential to transform nursing work by reducing administrative load, improving documentation quality, and enabling nurses to be more present with patients. Benefits were framed primarily in terms of care quality and staff experience rather than efficiency alone. At the same time, there was some concern about the risk of AVT outputs being misused as proxies for productivity, performance, or appraisal, particularly given the diversity of nursing roles, working patterns, and care settings.

National perspective: NHS England

Input from NHS England colleagues was welcomed by attendees, and there was broad agreement on the direction of travel. Most questions from the attendees centred on whether the speed of progress nationally was going to be rapid enough to support the safety and governance needs of the organisations now adopting this technology. Attendees welcomed the proposals for published guidance, emerging national standards, and the development of a self-certified AVT supplier registry to support safer procurement and reduce duplication of assurance work at local level,

Practice-based learning

The presentations and shared experience from Alder Hey Children’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Wye Valley NHS Trust really demonstrated the opportunities and the pace of the change that is already happening. Alder Hey reported positive outcomes from AVT use in outpatient and telephone consultations, including improved engagement and richer clinical documentation, while also highlighting the continuing need to address clinical safety and ethical considerations.  Wye Valley shared an innovative non-clinical use case, using AVT to support staff appraisals. This approach delivered significant time savings, improved accuracy, and supported staff with dyslexia, while also raising important questions about governance, equity, and appropriate use of outputs.

Cross-cutting themes

Several themes recurred throughout the discussion. Clinical safety was a dominant focus, with participants calling for clearer national guidance and better support for local organisations’ Clinical Safety Officers. Interoperability with Electronic Patient Records was identified as a major constraint, with responsibility resting not only with AVT suppliers but also with core EPR vendors. Education and capability development emerged as critical, as to capitalise on optimising AVT benefits, thought needs to be given to how nurses currently assess, verbalise, and document care. Participants also highlighted longstanding issues around the lack of standardised nursing documentation and the need to address this to really optimise benefits. There was also a recognition that evidence from community and mental health settings remains limited, and assumptions based on the use of AVT in clinic environments may be very different to its use in these settings.  

Conclusions and next steps

It’s clear that this is the start of a much broader and very important conversation for nurses. Registrants and attendees on the day voiced strong support for a Special Interest Group (SIG) for nurses that would enable the AVT conversation to continue, led by and owned by nurses, whilst also ensuring links across the multidisciplinary team through the AVID programme of work.  

Special Interest Group (SIG)

This Special Interest Group would support shared learning, surface nursing-specific risks, and act as a bridge between frontline experience and national policy, without duplicating regulatory functions. Participants supported further work on clinical safety, community and mental health use cases, education and knowledge sharing, Future Nurse is well positioned as convenor for the SIG alignment and to enable prioritisation of topics for further discussion so watch this space.

Thanks

A huge personal thanks to Linda Havard, former CNIO, University Hospitals of Liverpool, and Chris Richmond, former Head of Delivery, NHSX, for their support in the chat during the event and to our fab panellists, Rhod Joyce, Atif Ahmed, Peter White and Catherine Davies, plus of course all the Future Nurse team for helping to make this happen.