Much like the entire healthcare system, mental health services in the NHS and wider community are facing unprecedented pressure. Rising demand, increased awareness, and stretched budgets make diagnosing and treating mental health conditions a considerable challenge. 

It’s an urgent issue that affects everyone. Last year, mental health patients in Accident & Emergency departments waited more than 5.4 million hours. Vulnerable groups like pregnant women aren’t receiving the care they need—not because of a lack of funding, but because of overwhelmed workforces and chronic understaffing. And those people who do receive treatment are significantly less likely to be satisfied with their experience than those with physical conditions.

Technology like AI and speech recognition has the potential to raise standards of mental health care. For example, recent studies show how speech recognition could be used to detect the signs of depression. However, despite recent advances in AI and natural language processing, there’s just no substitute for the distinct, empathetic role of a mental health professional (MHP).

Mental health specialists routinely go above and beyond to capture the often lengthy context around a patient’s condition. It’s a significant drain on already exhausted medical professionals and Allied Health Professionals (AHPs), not just during the day, but out of hours and during valuable home time. It’s here that technology can be most impactful, not replacing professionals, but enabling them to work more flexibly and focus on what matters most: their patients and their personal time.

A flashpoint for mental health care

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted mental health for the worse, with numerous sacrifices made to combat the virus and widespread uncertainty. Society as a whole saw a groundswell in dormant or entirely new mental health conditions. Mental health professionals were faced with even more work—only completed thanks to their commitment/passion for their work, and a great deal of time and effort.

This mental health crisis led to what former Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid described as ‘a decade of change in just two years.’ This quote from a Mental Health Summit speech reflects both the rapid increase in mental health conditions—but also a rapid shift in priorities for the government.

Unfortunately, two years of rapid change can’t undo the damage of decades of underfunding. In January 2023, the UK government pledged £150 million to support urgent mental health care, but health and care providers are already dealing with chronic understaffing. Data from Mind shows that, as far back as 2013, four in ten mental health trusts had staffing levels below benchmarks. More recent reports from the British Medical Association show that the mental health workforce has had little growth in the decade since.

While more investment in mental health provision is welcome, it must be targeted appropriately—and applied consistently. Building highly qualified capacity takes time. Improving the mental health landscape will be a long, arduous process. Those patients suffering with mental health conditions can’t wait for Trusts to find, hire, and grow their resources and human expertise.

Investing in mental health professionals (MHPs)

Investment in patient-facing services will always be vital to transformation, but there’s also a significant opportunity to invest in the capacity that’s already there. This starts with understanding and supporting the overworked mental health teams on the frontlines of the patient experience.

Reported by the CQC, 45% of patients aren’t always given enough time to discuss their needs. This reflects a department under pressure—and that’s pressure that the right technology can alleviate.

The work of mental health professionals is notoriously complex. The role is wide and varied. And professionals need to be multiskilled in providing advice and counselling, behavioural management, and developing strategies for patients to manage their thoughts and emotions. Amid these considerable demands, unwieldy software and slow reporting processes negatively affect quality of care. This is a particularly big challenge in mental health, where collaboration across practitioners is so vital. In an effort to accurately capture the insights a colleague will need, it’s all too easy to overlook the needs of patients themselves.

How Augnito empowers mental health trusts

Developed in close partnership with medical professionals, Augnito delivers integrated, flexible speech recognition—and a more efficient, agile way of working. Mental health teams can switch to using Augnito’s designated mental health vocabulary, capturing all the vital clinical data naturally, descriptively, quickly, and accurately. This frees up time to focus on patients, not admin. More importantly, it reduces reporting that encroaches on home life—often the case at the end of the day when the MHP is finished.

Crucially, Augnito was built for the fast-moving, collaborative nature of healthcare. Patient notes can be captured on any device—Windows, MacOS, smartphone, or tablet—or directly in an existing clinical system. And a focus on security means information can be safely stored, fed into other systems, or securely shared with other teams across healthcare and social care as necessary.

Available in the cloud on a simple subscription basis, Augnito offers:

• Beyond 99% accuracy
• Support for any accent out-of-the-box
• No need for time-consuming voice training
• Faster reporting with average 5% efficiency gains

AI-powered speech recognition like Augnito won’t transform mental health provision itself. But it can transform how MHP’s work every day, enabling them to care for patients with more eye contact, more time to talk and listen, applying more attention to every step along the care journey to improved mental health.

Learn more about Augnito

Augnito is already impacting the patient journey through a growing list of UK reseller and integration partners. Request a demo to try Augnito Spectra for 7 days to see how it can help you.

[London, 18 May 2023] – Augnito Voice Services™ will integrate with Intelerad’s InSight PACS reporting, equipping clients with accessible, advanced speech recognition technology that simplifies patient care.

This new integration partnership will provide Intelerad clients with increased voice recognition options, giving them access to a pioneering, cloud-based product that helps ensure clients are not limited to one voice recognition platform and the risks associated with that dependence.
Intelerad Cloud is a menu of expertly cloud-engineered solutions designed to optimise the benefits of Cloud technology and scalability potential without sacrificing the performance of onsite architecture. Proudly vendor-neutral, Intelerad, is integrating its products with multiple technologies which fit with its cloud-based strategy, Augnito being the most recent. These can assist with the Cloud First strategy by utilising the Cloud for disaster recovery, image exchange and long-term archiving, and this latest addition is another way Intelerad is providing the latest cloud innovations and future resilience required by its clients.

Augnito can be used with a speech microphone or even through an app on a smartphone, making it faster and easier for radiologists and clinicians to diagnose critical conditions where every second counts, leading to better outcomes for patients.

Shiraz Austin, Managing Director at Scribetech (UK) Ltd and Co-Founder of Augnito stated, “Intelerad is a best-in-class provider of medical imaging software with a mission statement that dovetails very well into our own – where technology is developed to impact healthcare in a positive way and where making more time for patient care is paramount. Our partnership agreement solidifies the solution strategies of both organisations, and we’re excited that our secure, cloud-based, voice-powered AI speech recognition technology, Augnito, will play an important role in achieving this. Through the use of Augnito technology, Intelerad can empower radiologists to deliver reporting when and where it’s needed to keep the patient journey and clinical workflows moving.”

Intelerad is exploring integrating Augnito into other products in its portfolio, Arron Edwards, Managing Director of Intelerad, commented, “Intelerad is excited to be able to add the class-leading, cloud-based speech engine from Augnito into our fully featured rich reporting solution, which is built into InSight PACS. Our UK engineering team have worked hand-in-hand with the Augnito engineering team at Scribetech, leading to an incredibly successful integration which will ensure that we can continue to offer a best-in-class solution for our clients.”

ENDS
For further information, please contact:
Clare Dawe, Marketing Manager, Insignia Medical Systems powered by Intelerad
01256 247 010
[email protected]

ABOUT INTELERAD
Intelerad is one of the leading providers of medical imaging software and services for the healthcare industry. Headquartered in Raleigh, NC and Montreal, Quebec, Intelerad has over 900 employees located in offices across six countries. Nearly 2,500 healthcare organizations around the world rely on Intelerad products to manage patient data, helping them reduce time and workload while improving patient outcomes. Intelerad’s award-winning enterprise imaging solutions have been recognized globally by KLAS, with Intelerad’s Ambra Health ranked #1 in Image Exchange for eight consecutive years. To learn more, visit intelerad.com.

Intelerad welcomes contact from PRs and journalists for quotes, expert opinions or bespoke content for particular press articles. Please contact Clare Dawe in the first instance at [email protected]

ABOUT SCRIBETECH AND THE AUGNITO SOLUTION
Augnito is a secure, cloud-based, AI-driven clinical speech recognition product suite. It offers fast, easy ways to capture live clinical data on any device with 99.3% accuracy, support for multiple medical specialties, and no need for voice profile training. Augnito brings seamless speech recognition to daily workflows and third-party clinical systems, turning medical information into clinical documentation and making healthcare intelligence securely accessible wherever it’s needed. Augnito was co-developed by Scribetech, a clinical voice solutions innovator, fusing 20 years of transcription and digital dictation services to the NHS, speech-to-text, and clinical coding solutions for the healthcare sector, and its own speech recognition engine with advanced voice AI technology. Follow us on Linked-In.