In the latest episode of DrDoctor Will See You Now, we catch up with Dr Umang Patel, Chief Clinical Information Officer at Microsoft and paediatric doctor.
Tom and Umang - having first met in 2012 - trace their shared journey from the early days of health tech innovation - including Umang's time as one of the first 10 employees at Babylon Health - through the COVID disruption, and into the current AI revolution.
The class of 2012 - early digital health optimism: Tom and Umang were among the first wave of digital health innovators. The concepts and hypotheses from that era were largely correct, but timing was off - some things moved too fast, some too slow. There was a genuine belief the industry was about to change healthcare fundamentally.
Babylon Health and the "just do it" culture: Umang joined Babylon as one of its first employees, attracted by a culture of bold action that felt alien in healthcare. The ambition to operate simultaneously in the UK and Rwanda - the most and least developed health systems - as a proof of concept captures the spirit of that era. That bravery has since been largely beaten out of NHS innovators.
Why the NHS lost its momentum: Between the COVID hangover, top-down organisational changes, and a general inward collapse, the UK health tech scene entered a fallow period. The boldness of early innovators gave way to caution. Launching something of Babylon's scale feels further away now than it did in 2012.
COVID as a punch in the face - and a foundation: COVID humbled a generation that thought it was about to "win medicine." But it also proved that people would use digital tools for healthcare, removing what had previously felt like an insurmountable barrier to adoption.
The rise of clinical leadership: The next revolution coming from clinicians taking ownership rather than waiting for top-down change. The UK system has historically undervalued clinical leaders in executive roles - unlike the US - but that is beginning to shift. The most successful clinical entrepreneurs are those who can generalise beyond their specialism.
AI scribes as the "colour screen moment": AI ambient voice transcription has been the magic moment that's woken clinicians up to what AI can do - not because of the note-taking itself, but because it gives them back the ability to focus on patients. Like the first colour mobile phone screen, its real value is in what it unlocks next.
From scribes to agents - the MDT of the future: The real prize is an AI-augmented MDT: multi-human, multi-agent teams collaborating on patient care, not necessarily in the same room, with agents that listen, document, reach out to patients, gather new data, and build a richer clinical picture over time. This is where both speakers believe the technology is heading.
The NHS as a global AI training ground: The NHS is the second largest healthcare market outside the US, and uniquely diverse. No other health system has comparable breadth of patient data across such a range of languages, ethnicities, and conditions. This makes it uniquely positioned to train AI that can generalise globally - the "Hogwarts for AI in healthcare."
Democratisation of building: AI is removing the barriers between clinical intent and technical execution. Clinicians no longer need to know how to code to build a proof of concept. This is creating a new generation of generalists - people who can move across product, clinical, commercial, and technical domains - and that is the profile both speakers believe will define the next wave of innovation.
Purpose as the defining motivator of 2026: Despite all the talk of tooling and technology, both speakers agree that purpose remains the single most powerful motivator. The fact that being a doctor in the NHS is the number one career aspiration among 13-15 year olds in the UK - for the third year running - is seen as a hugely positive signal.
Tom: So welcome to another episode of DrDoctor Will See You Now, a podcast where we explore the intersection between technology and hospital transformation with a range of different guests from across the industry. And I'm really excited to say that we have Umang Patel with us today. He's CTO at Microsoft, and I have known for over 14 years. Umang, welcome to the podcast - class of 2012.
Umang: Hi Tom, great to be here. You're right, you know, I was looking this up, because if we were married, it would be our ivory wedding gift this year for 14 years. Yeah. And I was thinking you're gonna go back at the beginning. What was it like versus what it is now? Yeah, I think maybe at the beginning, if somebody said how do you eat an elephant? That's my thing to the ivory. Yeah. The joke is always like one piece at a time, isn't it? And I think probably back then, that was our approach, right? Like, we're like one piece at a time, we're sold a little bit, well, you know, trying to solve the next bit that comes from that, and then slowly make that transformation happen. I don't know what the punchline is nowadays, but it doesn't feel like it's eating the elephant one piece at a time is going to work. I think there's a question about are you stupid enough to try and eat an elephant is sort of part one and you know, if that is going to be your thing, then maybe you've got to think about doing it in different ways. Yeah. And maybe we've spent the last 14 years, like preparing to take on the feast. Yeah. That is maybe where we are with this after all of that time.
Tom: I mean, so we first met when you were at the beginning of your digital health journey, just like I was. And we sort of, we have this joke about the class of 2012, but it does feel like so much of what we're seeing happen now, those elephants that we're going to have to eat, started back then. And the concepts were right. And the hypotheses were right. Some things were too early. Some things went too fast. Some things went too slow. But you started off as one of the first 10 at Babylon. So talk to me a little bit about what that was like and how exciting that journey must have been.
Umang: Well, I have to get back a little bit before that. So proper job paediatrician. So I think probably the set, the context for me is going like, you sit in a hospital, you pick your career, like what a privilege to be able to do that and treat children. And then you say, okay, but hang on a minute, you've got to deal with this chronic condition your whole life. And what have we got? Like, I can't keep bringing you back every six months. I'm hoping for a different change or a different, you know, someone's going to have to give. Yeah. So all of that led me to thinking, well, what is that change going to need to be? And fundamentally, it wasn't really the technology that I thought was the issue. It was, I just couldn't work out how we were going to afford it. So money was a big challenge. And, you know, in the 14 years, that's just not changed, has it? Like it's got worse, but yeah, like it continues to be like, you know, just incredibly expensive to deliver care, let alone good care. And we haven't really got anywhere, or definitely not nowhere far enough on trying to solve some of these challenges. I'm sure we'll get onto that a bit later. I think all of that led me to going, well, how do you understand it better? That led me to an insurance company that led me to Babylon. And Babylon was really, you know, I love telling this story. Like we were sat having coffee, Ali Parsoni, the founder, and he said two things. He said, look, firstly, let's stop talking about it. Let's just do it. Yes. You've just like, no one says that in healthcare. He's like, let's just see. We need more of that. Yeah. The second thing, because I think it's funny. And like, I hold him to this. He was like, look, if anyone else is offering you the chance to change the world and pay off your mortgage, then great. If not, I'll see you on Monday.
Tom: It's brilliant sort of like recruitment line. Yeah. Okay. Well, hang on a minute.
Umang: It's such an Ali line. I love him for it.
Tom: How are you going to compete with that? You know, and here we are looking, you know, we'll get to the end of the Babylon story. Like my mortgage is still very much there. But it was that added, you know, we did have a fair go at trying to change the world. And I think we did a little bit of it.
Umang: Yeah. I mean, you really did. And I remember you know, when we started, we took a very different approach, which was small and gentle, should we say in comparison, but I remember watching the Babylon story from the outside. And like you guys copped a bit of criticism at times, but the fact that you did get on and like pushed forward an agenda, which sitting here in 2026 is spot on the money is something to be pretty proud of actually. And like, just tell me a little bit about being inside of that. And you know, I tell the story of when we first started Dr. Doctor having to co-locate our physical code in a physical data centre. Like literally we owned a rack in a server somewhere that was ours and having to write the most optimised code we could, because we couldn't afford an expensive server. We've come such a long way from that. You guys were attempting to do clinical AI in, you know, the early 2010s. Like talk to me about that. I mean, it must have been so exciting.
Tom: Yeah, it was. I was talking about this this morning, actually. It was lovely to just be in a room and it sort of, we metaphorically locked the door. Yeah. Like, let just like solve this problem. Like what, what possible ways can you solve it without really like being limited, like going to Rwanda? Like just imagine that like somebody going, Oh, I think we'll launch in Rwanda. You're like, we've got like four users in the UK. Like we've got no credibility to like start in and like let alone Rwanda as a country. And then of course it comes out, you go, well, the health minister said this, we think we can solve it. Imagine if we can prove it again, just for like takeaway soundbite. Like, yeah. How are they going? Like, well, imagine if we can do one of the most developed countries, like in the UK and one of the world's most developing countries like Rwanda, like everything else in between would be easy. Yeah. And we were like, Oh yeah, maybe it will be. Let's just do it. And then, you know, you know, we're really proud of that, but it was that sort of vibe and culture, which was, was really magical. It's been quite sad to see that. I think some of that just do it stuff has been beaten out of NHS innovators over the last sort of three or four years. I think it's a real shame. You know, the thought of somebody trying to launch something of Babylon's ambition and scale in the UK now seems further away than it did in 2012. You know, we, we are many of the big and exciting innovations, which we'll get to, seem to have started in other countries and have come here rather than us having perhaps so many big, bold homegrown innovators, the people that are doing it based in the UK. And I think I've got license to say, this is one of them, you know, we're doing it in a sort of much more constrained way without that, perhaps the bravery that was required. And it's, I think it's a shame to sort of see that get eroded.
Umang: It's a real privilege now. Can you say that Microsoft, does he get to see all of this, like energy coming back? So like, like number of people that are like, Oh, like, I wish I could do that. Or, you know, I've got this idea and as many people as I can, I try to talk to you, but you know, the energy is definitely there and the wills there and the intellect. I mean, I came just from this morning, talking to some clinicians from Imperial that were like, look, we want to solve MDTs. Amazing. We've got this plan. In fact, I've built this, I've just built it in co-work, sorry. And you know, I was like, Oh, hang on. It was a completely different start point to what we've got to say. Yeah. I think the intent is still there, which sort of gives me a lot of energy.
Tom: I think you're right. We don't quite have the same. We, I think we're going to get some scene. Like I really think we're getting to the next point of being like, actually, do you know what, whatever the adage is, you know, if you hit rock bottom, the only ways up, like it sort of feels like no one's coming, to solve it. You know, we have, you know, we can't get more top-down changes. It doesn't feel like, so it feels like people are getting like, do you know what? We're really going to have to take this on. Yeah. And that's definitely coming from the clinical side. And I do think the clinical voice being pushed through and greater clinical leadership is going to be, where that revolution starts. And yes, maybe about then, you know, 2012, it was a bit more like in the markets. It was a bit more, I mean, I kept on going. I didn't really understand why an investment banker gets to run a hospital grief or healthcare and that, you know, and now I'll have a dig at you. Like I really don't understand why we need management consultants to do all of this stuff. So there's something about how do we go about and sort of galvanize that clinical cohort and not to get them to necessarily build it or, you know, learn all the other stuff around it, but to say that this is what we need. This is what we want to happen for our patients and for the generations of healthcare that we're sort of building foundations for. And then start orchestrating the right people for it and be like, well, I need this person and that person versus maybe what we did before, which was people had great ideas and then we're like, okay, well, I'll get a doctor to come along. So yeah, it's interesting. It was, it was quite often the clinician was almost the afterthought in the room, weren't they? Rather than the sort of foundational.
Umang: I, something that I've really noticed is that there is no shortage of clinically led innovation. I think medicine in the UK at least tends to reward, deep specialism rather than generalism, generally speaking form about a term. And what often happens is you'll meet a clinician who's done an amazing job of innovating in their slice, but they aren't necessarily, well-trained or practiced in kind of looking left and right a little bit. And the really successful clinical entrepreneurs are the ones who manage to generalize the work that they're doing. And I think that's an interesting comparison to, to sort of my background as an engineer and then a management consultant, which is, you know, you're sort of taught to solve problems and, and be a bit curious. And actually I think medicine, it does train people to be curious and ask all the right questions. So it should be that somebody who's been trained to diagnose and do all the things that you get taught in medical school should be really good entrepreneurs. And I think there's something in, in helping people sort of just look up a little bit and left and right, that will really help sort of turn that into, into scale from what I've seen.
Tom: Yeah. I think that we don't do it right at medical school. You know, I think primary care does it really well. I think GP entrepreneurs, and then you say like the difficulty there is like, how'd you get into where the cost base is because primary care has, you know, comparatively, tiny amounts of budget compared to secondary care spend. So I think the innovation has been focused. Unlike say in the US where most hospital leaders are, clinicians, like, you know, that's, that's been rare. I remember when I first started and I did my leadership fellowship, it was on this premise of wanting to be a chief exec of a hospital. And I remember I was like, because I think we need more clinical. And if you look at all the evidence and I'm doing something at the King's fund back then. And it was like, well, the best systems seem to have, and I'm sort of like painting this in a way that like makes it the way that I want it to be. But it felt like, like the, the better systems or the more progressive systems have clinical leaders as their chief execs, not just as a chief medical officer. And I think we're seeing that in some places now where, where people are coming through and being like, but I just want that now go off and make that happen. Second part, I'd say what I'm really excited about when the other thing, which I don't think, and we talk often about the cost of 2012, like I said, sort of network effect. Yes. I think we didn't have that before. And now it's increasingly like becoming say, like, I'm sure like me, you're on a hundred different WhatsApp groups and you get energy just from flicking through what people are being like, Oh, I'm just trying to solve this. I'm just doing that. And I think the tooling is becoming more and more useful now for people to say, well, actually, like I don't need to know how to code, or I don't need to like stop one career path in order to follow another one. I can do all the bits and pieces because that's sort of the infrastructure. The infrastructure is there and being portfolio is more acceptable. And I'm super excited to talk about how AI magenta coding democratises the ability to do things. Cause I think you're right about the energy, but before we get there, I'm just going to go back. So, so we went through the exciting years of Babylon and you know, that story perhaps didn't end as everybody wants it to, but it did, it did push the industry forward. I feel like there was real energy. I think between 2012 and 2016, 17, 18, there was, we all thought we were going to change the world and do you know what? I still think we will. It's just going to take a bit longer. But we really thought we were, we were right on the cusp there. And then I do feel like we had, we had, it was a little, it was a little bit, the COVID years, which accelerated so many things, but they, they caused some chaos and they caused some hangover, but I feel like we then had a fallow period. I don't know if, if, if you reflect that too, but it really felt particularly in the UK that things, things sort of collapsed inward. And, we're seeing some of the sort of, the shoots of spring now, but what was your reflection on, on that?
Umang: Yeah. I think the same, not just in the health tech, right? Like I remember sitting there and like before COVID being like, we're going to have, you know, personalised medicines and like everyone's genome is going to be sequenced and we'll have very specific medications or like, so we really thought all those silver bullets were going to come true. I think COVID was sort of a literal and metaphorical punch in the face, isn't it? That just when you're not as clever as you think you are, you go back to core stuff and you know, we all like the, the sort of trauma that everyone lived through and, you know, I'm sure that'd be a film or something that I categorise it, in due course, but there's definitely something I remember thinking, but we thought we were going to win medicine. Like we thought actually we were going to be on the next phase of that. And then you're like, Oh, a whole new virus comes along that changes physiology in a way that we don't understand. Just by way of story, I remember the first time I saw COVID toes and I was like, I just like, what, like what? You sort of sat there in the context of all of this and we've got all of COVID going on. And then there was a parent saying, but my child's toes are a different colour. Right. And I remember thinking I'd like, should I like that? Because it was so random. It was just funny. Like, do I worry about that? I have no idea if I do worry about that or not. And there's no book to look at. And there was this, only because it was in the news this week. Wasn't it about that guy that showed up blue? There's some guy that showed up blue and basically he had hadn't washed his sheets or something and the dye had come off until he woke up blue. But I remember really vividly the first step to COVID toes was scrubbing the toes with an alcohol wipe just in case it was dirt. Like, you know, like back to basics, really. So we sat there thinking we'd gone from where we thought we were going to be to like this, we're all sort of, like you say, like rudimentary. Yeah. Put the foundations in place.
Tom: So I think like the whole, the whole of us, I didn't build ourselves up too much about it. The second thing that I can get diggity, which I think is where these screensheets are coming from, is really set a foundation that like, yeah, if COVID hadn't have happened, and we had that sliding doors moment, and we were still sitting here, we'd be going, oh, yeah, but we still haven't proven that everyone will use our phone. Yes. Or that healthcare can have moved because these were the challenges that felt insurmountable. So in some ways, I think that foundation has now been set that we know we can move to a metaphorical mountains by like shifting care online, engaging with people in different ways. So the first part of it, I think the second part of it is, again, there's a whole generation of people coming free being like, oh, but hang on a minute, I can't just, I mean, this is true of global politics as well, isn't it? Like, I can't rely on the world being the way that I thought it was going to be. We've got to take some ownership and sort of, you know, sovereignty over what we want to do with it going forward.
Umang: I mean, I think you did, and you did show with GP hand, etc, that people will use these tools if they can, like, we proved it, as you said, we proved during COVID that people use their phones for all sorts of things. I guess all industries go through their sort of hype cycle, and then they come down the other side. And we were right at the top. And then we got punched in the face by COVID. And perhaps it's, that's why that lag happened is the fall was aggressive. But as you say, the foundation is there. I like what you say as well, about people taking some agency, because I think that is something I've really noticed, even in the last six months or eight months, is suddenly it feels like the world's gone, all right, okay, we've got some new tooling, we can get out there and we can begin to use that to change things. This kind of AI revolution, I don't know how it's manifesting within Microsoft, but certainly in the startup community, it feels like they can do and they get shit done. They're pretty strong at the moment.
Tom: Yeah, yeah. I mean, the same, like Microsoft's whole revolution of going, oh, like copilot for this, right? You know, copilot for another thing, or how do you make it easy? And then what's the platform play? And how do you make it secure? But you're right, like, what an entirely different world you live in when people think they can build? Yeah. I was thinking about this, and then I was like, look, like, when I went to think about starting medicine, I honestly thought I'd have to learn Latin. Really? And somebody advised me you have to learn Latin. Yeah. So like, I did some Latin. And I thought you had to know Latin in order to become a good doctor. And I'm sure there were, maybe just before my time, that was entirely true, just to understand the words. Yeah. I think we probably are getting to a new point now, like, you definitely need to be able to type, right? Like, there's, you can't be a very effective doctor if your typing speed is slow, even with AVT, and maybe that will change it. But there's, there's something going, well, like, what is the next bit of that you take really bright people? Yeah. And say that if you want to do this amazing, purposeful job, which is amazing. And, you know, I was really pleased to see that if you ask 13 to 15 year olds, yeah, in the UK, the number one job they want, and the number one place you want to work, it's doctor in NHS. Really? Yeah, and it's third year running. Yeah, it's really, really exciting. All these great people, all these great kids go, I want that. And then you say to them, well, you've got to learn some new tooling in order to be effective at it. They're not going to balk at saying, okay, great, I've got to learn how to prompt properly. Yeah. I've got to sort of get into understanding the governance by different tools or understanding what different models. I think that's the change we're seeing.
Umang: That's cool. I think whatever you do, and it's worked really well for us at Doctor Doctor is, is that if you have purpose, that seems to be the one thing that in 2026 people want. Yeah. You know, they still want money and they want power and they want all of the other things that matter. But purpose seems to be core to everything. And I actually have to whisper it. I think I'm a bit of a frustrated doctor. I think there's a part of me that wishes that he'd gone to medical school. So I've spent the rest of my life trying to sort of fill that gap. But the sense of purpose you get from going into hospital and thinking, oh, these people are actually using our technology or you're more hands on and we're really helping them is pretty special. So, and I'm also interested in your point about prompting and those skills, because we talked a bit earlier about sort of generalists versus specialists. It certainly feels within Doctor Doctor that whenever I talk to my teams, I'm saying to people to succeed in this new world, you have to be a generalist. It's not enough to just be the world's best product manager or the world's best designer or the world's best account manager. You've got to be able to do a little bit of those other things as well, because AI democratises all of that. It allows everybody to build a POC or to send a cold email really well, because they can do the research quickly. That seems to be a life skill rather than just an academic skill.
Tom: Yeah. I'm probably a frustrated management consultant. My brother watches it, I love that, because he's a management consultant and I take the mic constantly. But again, having that skill, it's fantastic being a doctor or being a nurse and delivering care. It does allow you sometimes to be like, well, I don't have to then do the other stuff because I'm a good egg. I don't think that's true. Sometimes it's like, okay, that's not enough. You can't then go in and, I don't know, order every test. You might be the most amazing doctor individually to the patient, but you're probably not the most amazing one for the system. Actually, increasingly, we can get onto sort of the risks of overdiagnosis and challenges, perhaps, that you're not even in that case. And sort of more and more things you have to become more discerning. But yeah, I definitely think that this whole new ability to sort of engage people differently is going to be, what's my thread? Yeah, it doesn't matter. Yeah, I mean, certainly the ability to engage people differently is going to have to change. You mentioned a minute ago that people want to become doctors, they want to work in the NHS. What's your take on innovation and technology, specifically within the NHS versus what's happening globally? Are we doing better, do you think, than the rest of the world? Do we have an opportunity to build something really special here? Or are we laggards?
Umang: No, definitely. I'm hugely biased on this, but I think this is our thing, without wanting to get into the politics of it. I haven't done the research on it yet, but I was thinking, what have we got as Europe which is far better? We haven't got more people, we haven't got more missiles, etc. We haven't got more money or oil or the others, but we have probably got, if you sum it all up, the best health system. Yeah, I think so. Pros and cons of NHS, the Danish system, the whatever other systems, all together, I think we have the best health and social care system. And we've worked really hard to get there. And we need to protect that. Therefore, I think we've got to work out how we scale it. So what works here should work elsewhere. We definitely see that from Microsoft, as an example. The second biggest market for healthcare outside the US is the UK. But if you break the US down into component parts, then none of them are anywhere near as large as the NHS. So we need to use some of that gravity to be like, look, we've got this, and we can test stuff. And, you know, if we test stuff here, we can sort of act like the Hogwarts for AI in healthcare, right? And I think that's really exciting.
Tom: Yeah. Because I spend a lot of dinner parties, saying exactly that and saying how the NHS is the best healthcare system in the world. And it's a shame that the political discourse has begun to slightly turn against that. And I don't want to spend too long on that today. But I think the thing that really worries me about that is I feel sometimes the NHS has lost its confidence a little bit. And particularly with some of the changes that have happened centrally in the last 18 months, and whether or not they were required is again, too big a question for us to think. But I really feel like the NHS has lost its bluster. And I'd love to think about how we as a set of innovators can give it back, because it is such a brilliant thing. Sort of such brilliant people. And it should be a hotbed of innovation.
Umang: I think it only takes a few people, like, so every Friday when I go in, like, like, this nowadays, I haven't done it recently, but like a year ago, 18 months ago, I'll go in and say, like, he's heard of ChatGPT. And most people be like, we're too busy doing our own stuff. And their own stuff is still amazing. And it's lovely when you start seeing people going, I've seen this ambient voice, as an example, you're going in and people are like, somebody came and grabbed me. Like, you're somebody who works in tech, aren't you? Like, I've just found this thing, right? And they were describing their ambient voice. Yeah, it wasn't the Microsoft thing, but like, it was like, they were like, as if it was magic. I've seen this thing. And it's amazing. Have you seen it? Yeah, of course, I started being like, like, in my head, I was like, well, yeah, like, about a year ago, like, how are you just catching up? It's like, and then I was like, how jealous am I? Yeah, that I haven't been able to discover it again and and then you get into like, okay, well, like, if we desperately want to use it, which like clearly you do, then we've got to go through the hard yards. And I think that is the training ground for the sort of, you know, the new class that will come through that will hopefully be here in 14 years. So they'll be like, oh, we did our bit. Yeah, we did our sort of tour of duty.
Tom: I really hope that we have laid that foundation. You know, I remember all of those meetings in the sort of mid 2010s talking about information governance, and is it okay to share information with patients? And I have to say, we've come, we've come so far that it has hopefully made it much easier for these tools. I mean, you mentioned AVT. So we're in the middle of this AI revolution, right? And I really want to talk about giving doctors the ability to code. But before we do, so I think the scribes are such a great example of that magic moment. And it's so hard to give people who are doing a really good job every single day, that that's that sense of magic that you and I get perhaps more often when we see the stuff that's coming through.
Umang: They have created a pool that's different to anything before. I've also noticed in primary care, lots of my friends who are GPs, who I obviously talked to about health tech on a regular basis, they, they have suddenly started really waking up to not just AVT, but also some of the triage tools that are out there. It feels like suddenly doctors in the UK are ready to use these things. How do you think the scribe part of the conversation is going to play out? Like, so we're, we're about to see everybody taking these things out. What's it look like in a couple of years time?
Tom: Yeah, I think it is exactly that, like by way of separate story. I remember the first time I got a colour mobile phone, like I was at Sam's uni. And I remember, and it was, I know the T60. I shouldn't pretend that I don't know. We're getting into the colour screen and we get to show people the colour screen. And they're like, Oh, wow, there's a colour screen. Of course, objectively, you're like, how does that help on a, you know, on a phone that can't take pictures and stuff anyway? You're like, I don't know, but I'm sure it's like, you know, the same as quality. I don't know, but they're saying like, but it is cool. And then like, what does that then open it up into being able to get you to do? I guess the next bit, then you go, well, if I can do that, then I can start, you know, thinking about putting cameras and phones and so on. I think that's where we're going with Scribes. I think Scribes have been like, say that magic moment of like, look at this thing, which is solving a real pain point for me. And letting me, and I don't think that pain point is just typing. I think by far what people love about them is going, I can just concentrate on my patient. I think that's then led to people sort of psychologically going or like feeling culturally, well, hang on a minute, if I can allow myself to, to not get stuck so much in the bureaucracy of delivering care, even though I buy into the fact that I clearly have to document it in order to be safe and so on. But if I can use some of this tooling to avoid some of that, and let me go back to being or doing the thing I've really wanted to do, which is look at people and care for people and, you know, like really show them empathy, then what else can I do? Yes, I think, okay, well, what do I need in order to do that? I might need some more information. Okay, great. Well, how can I do that without forcing them to come and see me every six weeks and fill in a paper form, which is rubbish. And, you know, for them to be anxious, like, you know, I mean, my dad being anxious about filling in a form, not because he's right about the form, it's just like my English isn't good enough to fill in this form. And that, you know, and then they avoid it. And then, you know, so there's something about being like, if what can I do in a different way? And I think that's the world that we're entering into now. Yeah, that's exciting with the push and the pull of people being like, oh, wow, like, well, if we do a little bit, then I should do more.
Umang: Yeah, I think that's right. It is a huge unlock when you realise that. I think what I found when I've started using AI note taking in my meetings is there's a journey, right? Because to just record a business meeting isn't actually very helpful. But as those tools have got better, and have started like kicking out actions and stuff, that's starting, I think, to be useful. And what I've noticed has been the real unlock for me is taking those actions and transcripts, combining them with my other notes, and then using AI to help me sort of summarise my own thoughts and come up with the next steps. That's the moment for me that unlocked that. And I'm really curious for doctors, because I suspect you're right, that if all it does is take the notes for you, it's actually, it's nice to have, right? But it's the how does this allow me to practise much better medicine, and perhaps link up parts of the diagnosis I might not otherwise be able to link up or bring in new data, that feels to me like, it's going to be pretty special when that starts happening.
Tom: It's exactly what we were talking about this morning, which was like how the MDT meeting, sorry, the MDT meeting that you have, you've got, I don't know, like 20 big brains sat around, really forming the next part of care. And then that gets summarised into one sentence that gets put into the notes, because somebody's frantically trying to capture it. And you get this, you know, like the minimum versus the richness of it. Yeah. So that's not to say, can you put the whole transcript in? No. Can you get it to, like you say, start adding something else in and then trying to shape it in a way? And that may be not exactly now, but almost definitely in a couple of years time. Yeah. And I think that's what people are starting to sense. That's sort of being, oh, yeah, that'd be good. And then what I love this morning, the end of the conversation in the elevator out of the office was like, oh, by the way, why don't we just turn all of that teaching, all of that sort of that noting into learnings of the week, so we can do like a flash quiz. So any trainee coming through can like learn it on a patient that they can see, and they can go back and see, you know, the scans. And I was like, that's amazing. Yeah. Then takes all of my medical students that fundamentally look bored, when they just have to follow me around on a ward round. And we're like, look, here's like, can you go off and do something in a really different way? And again, all of that is like, you know, like brilliantly, that's two or three times a week where somebody's having those ideas. And I think it's for people like us to go, hey, let's take those ideas and turn them into something that can scale and can be useful and actually get done.
Umang: Yeah, totally. Right. I love that idea. It's interesting that you, you honed in on the MDT stuff, because as we've started thinking about a genetic AI, our own product, you know, we start from a patient facing angle, right? And we started putting some genetic stuff in terms of patient facing voice. And I'd like to talk about that in a moment or so. But when we've put together our theory of change, it ends with essentially an MDT, ends with MDT. And it has got a got a slide, of course, because I'm a management consultant. And it's got multi human multi agent teams collaborating on a patient's care. And I think that world where the MDT could be done by people who aren't necessarily in the same room, coordinating on a platform of some sort, with the help of a set of agents that are going in, listening, documenting, adding to the thinking, going away and reaching out to the patient, getting new information, coming back, adding that to the corpus of data that we have on that person, and ultimately providing essentially a personalised care team. That's where I think this is going. And that just like, it fills me with so much excitement to think.
Tom: And then to go back to it, like nowhere else has to say like the huge amount of data. Yeah. So like somebody was like, again, we're suddenly thinking like, okay, well, like, okay, so you're going to do that. Great. So then I've got to like, get an agent that's trained off a huge amount of data, or even has enough data to create synthetic data to learn off of like, you know, you get in this really exciting world of like, I can like the data is no longer the limit. But you know, like the starter data is still and go, well, nowhere has that much. No.
Umang: Another thing is nowhere has it with such diversity.
Tom: Yeah.
Umang: Which I think then is like, it's like you sort of sit there when you're going to any NHS hospital, like yeah, regardless, like just the UK is hugely diverse. You know, that is brilliant. And I actually, this is because this is literally happened on the way here. I came out of the office to come over here. And there was a lady in a wheelchair. So just a bit down, holding a dog. And so I didn't delay that. Anyway, yeah, no, it is yours. Lady must have been about in the 60s. Yeah. Little dog, and a I presume granddaughter or somebody like, you know, 20 year old, like knelt at the wheel of the wheelchair. Okay. So I sort of came out for it's going to be late. So rushing before I hang on a minute, like that is not a normal seat. It's not often that I see just somebody stranded on a wheelchair in a wheelchair holding a dog. So I'd go in with somebody sat on the floor next to him. So when I was like, Oh, how do you like as I you're right, and they've got the dog lead caught in the wheelchair wheels. And actually, you know, this is not like about London, like a few people walk past rushing from place to another. Some other guy came out of nowhere. And you could hardly speak English. But was like, Oh, do you need some help? Yeah, nice. And then between us, and then I sort of sat there thinking, like, well, I'm gonna go find some scissors, because like, like, I've got zero patience. I would just cut the dog lead. He's like, I don't give up. So I didn't like pulled it apart anyway. But what I loved about it was it was that I'm sure that happens in any major city. Yeah. But there was something about what I enjoyed about like that little interaction was it was diversity that got us. Yes, it was like the willingness to give it to care. Yeah. And like to not be broken, like have those barriers. And I don't think that's true with most countries and or healthcare systems. No, it's definitely not true of most staff groups. Yeah. So when I walk into like, from me, like, I can't remember, there's a place I mean, there's 73 different languages, right? But you know, there's something about it like that is unusual, like, there's a huge workforce that goes, actually, I've been able to do this, I've got that. And that is fantastic. That's, that's something we've got to protect. And then try and work on scaling.
Tom: Yeah, that is - I have to admit, I'd never even thought about that angle before. But that's huge, because we are going to try and export this like, the technology being being trained on a proper breadth of thought and ways of working is, is a massive advantage that NHS has.
We are on the lookout for industry leaders to join our podcast, so if you want to be part of the incredible conversations we are having around digital transformation within the NHS, we'd love to host you on DrDoctor Will See You Now!
