Introduction
How can we help busy clinicians spend less time on admin, to free up their capacity for what matters?
One of North West London’s (NWL) research and innovation missions is focused on supporting children and young people’s mental health. A key opportunity in this area is reducing administrative burden for our clinical colleagues through the adoption of innovative digital tools. This is at the heart of our work with TORTUS, an AI-powered medical assistant. By connecting TORTUS with the NWL system through the ICHP Innovation Exchange, we’ve helped accelerate its adoption into one Child Health Hub* (CHH) in our region to support integrated care delivery and improve clinician experience.
As the innovation partner for NWL, and thanks to our embedded position within local research and innovation priorities, ICHP streamlined the process from innovation sourcing to implementation.
The challenge: improving mental health integration in CHHs
The NWL Mission to support children and young people’s mental health aims to improve early intervention for mental health and neurodevelopmental (ND) conditions, while addressing fragmentation in care. CHHs are a key, innovative model of care, offering integrated, holistic care. ICHP have been working with the teams to achieve greater mental health and neurodevelopmental disorders integration in the hubs.
Two existing, successful CHHs, South Fulham Primary care Network (PCN) and K+W South, were selected as Mission Implementation Sites to test sustainable and scalable approach to improving integration of mental health provision. Our support as a mission team has focused on improving the multi-disciplinary team (MDT) component of CHHs as a forum for collaboration between physical health professionals and those in the mental health and neurodevelopmental fields.
Local teams faced barriers:
- identifying the right patients to bring for review at the MDT
- identifying and promoting attendance by mental health and ND professionals to get relevant expertise for case review
- knowing what services to refer patients to after MDT review
- ensuring outcomes from the meeting were being appropriately captured.
After identifying these pain points, ICHP presented a selection of five relevant innovations to South Fulham PCN. Each innovation was assessed for potential benefits, supporting evidence, and indicative costs. South Fulham PCN chose TORTUS – a solution that directedly addressed their challenge of being able to capture outcomes from a meeting, reducing pressure on admin and clinical time and enabling better follow-up with patients.
Why TORTUS?
TORTUS is a clinically safe, AI-powered assistant designed to reduce the administrative burden on healthcare professionals. It can listen to patient consultations, transcribe conversations using medical-grade speech-to-text AI, and draft clinical notes, referral letters, and coding suggestions in real time.
By enabling clinicians to focus on clinical conversations rather than documentation, TORTUS supports improved care quality, clinician wellbeing, and operational efficiency. Its ambient voice AI and intelligent dictation features are particularly valuable in multidisciplinary settings like CHHs. The CHH MDTs are currently supported with limited administration time and most clinical staff attending are not remunerated – so a tool that can capture the critical information from a meeting while saving staff time can offer huge value.
ICHP’s Innovation Exchange in action
TORTUS’s journey into the system was powered by our structured support:
- A bespoke Innovation Surgery: a 60-minute session with our expert team to explore the innovation’s value proposition, assess alignment with local priorities, and provide tailored guidance. This session included input from clinical fellows, digital transformation leads, and mental health specialists.
- Introductions that matter: facilitating introductions to CHH leads to support engagement with innovative tools and approaches
- Visibility and credibility: Raising awareness of TORTUS and other innovations during mission activities, contributing to its visibility within the CHH network
- Implementation: Supporting early adoption of TORTUS, within South Fulham CHH
- Brokerage: Acting as an honest broker between TORTUS and the NWL ICB to ensure alignment with system priorities and strategic implementation.
What we achieved together
As a result of ICHP’s support, TORTUS was successfully implemented in the South Fulham CHH in NW London. South Fulham PCN reported the pilot was successful and the tool supported effective note-taking at the MDT. Some GPs who attend the MDT have now also taken up use of the tool in their own clinics.
This collaboration demonstrates the power of the Health Innovation Network to identify, support, and review the implementation of impactful innovations that address specific challenges for healthcare staff and/or populations. For innovators like TORTUS, working with ICHP means clarity on how your solution fits local priorities, support to test and embed your product in a real-world setting, and brokerage with the right NHS decision-makers.
“TORTUS works well for the MDT meetings… It produces concise summaries of discussions which can be sent out to attendees, which has been great” – Dr Katy Dudgeon, Children and Young people Lead for South Fulham PCN
Are you an innovator ready to work with us?
To find out more about the ICHP Innovation Exchange and how we can support you, visit our home for innovators or get in touch at innovators@imperialcollegehealthpartners.com
Work in children’s mental health in NWL?
Find our more about NWL’s mission-led approach
See how we can support your Child Health Hub to improve mental health integration.
*The CHH model includes two key components: Specialist Outreach Clinics and Multidisciplinary Team (MDT) Meetings. Notably, the MDT does not directly see the child. For the purposes of this mental health (MH) and neurodevelopmental (ND) integration work, we have focused on improving the MDT component of CHHs as a forum for collaboration between physical health professionals and those in the MH and ND fields.
