AI-Driven Modernization is Boosting Patient Satisfaction

LAS VEGAS — Public sector organizations can modernize with AI and cloud services to better serve citizens, save money and increase engagement, according to experts from the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS).

“Where are our problems, and how can AI potentially support some of the issues that we’ve got as an organization?” Medway NHS Foundation Trust Divisional Director of Operations Nicola Cooper said Tuesday at AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas, Nevada. “It’s taking the pressure away from our clinical staff, but also from our administrative staff. And I think every time we start to scope, we see more opportunity.”

With waiting lists currently holding roughly 10% of the British population in limbo and an infrastructure often described as “outdated,” Cooper said modernizing NHS systems is critical. The Medway NHS Foundation Trust has successfully deployed cloud-based AI to overhaul its patient contact systems, she added, offering a compelling roadmap for the future of public service delivery across the NHS. The project, executed in collaboration with industry partners, partially targeted communication for patients and backlogs. Cooper emphasized that modernization was not a luxury, but a necessity for their specific demographic.

“When I say we have a long wait, we have a long wait,” Cooper stated. “On top of that, Medway, where I work, is an incredibly deprived area … If I tell you that our average reading age of our demographic is six, so incredibly challenged, and one of the things that we really wanted to understand is how we can improve how we communicate with our patients.”

Cooper said that the Medway Trust’s contact center was overwhelmed with approximately 50% of the 120,000 annual calls going unanswered because staff were too busy. The operational bottleneck created a toxic environment for employees and failed citizens who were unable to cancel or reschedule appointments, leading to wasted clinical slots, she added.

Cooper highlighted that the strategy was not to adopt technology for its own sake, but to apply a problem-centric approach to modernization.

“We were looking at where our problems [were] and how [we could apply] AI to potentially support some of the issues that we [had] as an organization,” Cooper explained.

The solution involved replacing legacy telephony with a cloud-based contact center platform and integrating AI tools to handle routine queries, Cooper said. This allowed the Medway Trust to automate the “low-hanging fruit” of patient interactions — parking queries, appointment checks and simple modifications — freeing staff for more complex, sensitive cases, she added. The impact was nearly immediate after deployment, Cooper said.

“Within six weeks … 80% of our calls are now automated, which means that, of 110,000 [calls], that is 80,000 or 90,000 a year that are not having to have a personal answer,” Cooper said.

This implementation fundamentally altered the relationship between the public service and citizens, Cooper said. Previously, staff faced daily hostility due to long wait times, but the modernization — which operates 24/7 and supports multiple languages — has restored trust to the local NHS organization, she added.

“[Patient satisfaction] has flipped completely to now an incredibly happy group of patients that are like, ‘why didn’t you do this years or years ago?” Cooper said.

Crucial to this modernization story was the management of cultural change. A frequent barrier to public sector automation is the fear of workforce reduction. Medway addressed this by involving staff directly in the design process, ensuring the technology was viewed as a tool for support rather than replacement.

“We didn’t go in, because the minute you talk about AI, people say, ‘Well, that’s it. My job’s gone. I’m losing my job. They’re replacing me with a computer,’” Cooper said. “We’ve been really careful about how we’ve gone to those teams and involved them right to the beginning.”

The success at Medway is now serving as a scalable model for the wider NHS. The trust is expanding the technology to support cancer services and is establishing a regional hub to assist the prison population, a notoriously difficult-to-reach group, Cooper said, and the Medway Trust plans to apply these AI efficiencies to back-office functions like HR and finance to help meet a £50 million savings target.

For Cooper, the modernization project showed what is possible within the constraints of a massive public sector institution.

“I don’t think I ever thought working in an organization like the NHS … [would] get the opportunity to do this,” Cooper said. “The sky really is the limit for us.”