Collaborative Innovation to Transform Health Visiting Practice.
Working in partnership with Herefordshire and Worcestershire Integrated Care Board (H&W ICB), the West Midlands Health and Wellbeing Innovation Network (WMHWIN) delivered a challenge-led innovation programme focused on improving the efficiency and experience of health visiting services through technology enabled innovation.
The programme brought together health visitors, families, NHS organisations, local authorities and an industry partner to explore how technologies such as Ambient Voice Technology (AVT), AI-powered documentation and automation could reduce administrative burden while supporting high quality interactions between health visitors and families.
The aim was to explore and understand the health visiting services in detail to identify an area of greatest impact, or challenge, to make a change supported by a cocreated technology solution. The early research identified improving documentation processes, reducing duplication and wishing to free up time as key drivers.
An extensive scouting process was undertaken by WMHWIN to identify innovators who could cocreate a documentation solution with the health visiting service. The panel of stakeholders voted in Scribetech (Augnito) to join the innovation programme.
Supported by WMHWIN over 3 months to codevelop the solution with the health visiting service, Scribetech (Augnito) embarked on an intense period of development to refine week after week their Ambient Voice Technology (AVT) solution to meet the needs of health visitors. The solutions were demonstrated live to an audience of stakeholders on Demo Day.
The Challenge
Health visiting services operate in complex environments, requiring practitioners to balance detailed documentation requirements with relationship –based care and safeguarding responsibilities.
Through discovery work with families and frontline teams, several challenges were identified, however, the time burden of health visitor documentation quickly arose as an area of focus, with 93% of staff reporting duplication of documentation and 69% reporting that administration reduced time for meaningful conversations with families.
This resulted in the following challenge statement:
“How might we enable health visitors to efficiently and accurately document and review visit notes and data whilst maintaining family rapport and willingness to disclose sensitive information?”
The Innovation Approach
The programme followed WMHWIN’s structured challenge-led innovation methodology and was delivered across three phases: Discovery and research, Design and Open Innovation & Collaboration, delivered through a variety of mediums including in person and online workshops.
The Discovery and research phase focused on understanding current service delivery across the health visiting pathway, identifying pain points and prioritising opportunities for improvement. Families were engaged directly to understand their experiences of the service.
Design workshops then brought together frontline health visitors, NHS organisations, commissioners, local authorities and NHS England to validate the challenge and explore how documentation processes worked in practice across different settings and teams.
Following this, WMHWIN undertook a structured scouting and selection process to identify innovators aligned to the challenge. Applications were assessed against criteria including alignment to the documentation challenge, maturity of Ambient Voice Technology capabilities and ability to operate safely within NHS environments.
Following a collaborative selection process, Scribetech (Augnito) was selected to participate in the programme.
Co-design and Outcomes
The programme moved into a Discovery Sprint phase, bringing together health visitors, stakeholders and Scribetech (Augnito) to explore how AVT could function within real-world health visiting practice.
Workshops focused on:
- Real-worldconsiderations, such as offline mode for rural areas
- Documentation and referral workflowsand how they vary across the region
- Exploring how families might benefit from their own summary
- Safeguarding considerationsand special treatment of certain information
- Prioritisation of high impact development areas
This collaborative approach ensured the solution was shaped around frontline practice and user need, incorporating the difficulties and realities of daily use.
Key development priorities included AVT template and output refinement, referral automation, consideration of matching with electronic patient record systems, KPI dashboards, automated clinical coding and personalised family summaries.
The programme culminated in a collaborative and celebratory Demo Day event, where stakeholders were able to see live demonstrations of the developed solution with a consultation from two health visitors from across the two regions, hear directly from the Scribetech (Augnito) and reflect on the learnings generated throughout the programme. The event also marked the beginning of planning for the next phase of delivery, including workshops focused on pilot scope, implementation considerations, timelines and evaluation approaches.
Looking Ahead
The programme has provided Herefordshire and Worcestershire ICB with a clearer understanding of how technology and an innovation approach can support the future delivery of health visiting services.
By combining structured discovery, stakeholder engagement and open innovation, the programme has created a replicable model for exploring technology –enabled transformation within community and preventative care services.
Following Demo Day, work will continue to support the co-design and planning of a pilot phase, including implementation planning, evaluation and wider service adoption.
Ultimately, the programme represents an important step towards more efficient, user-centred and digitally enabled health visiting services that improve both staff experience and outcomes for families.
