Meet Olivia, NHS’s New Virtual Nurse
Hot on the heels of last week’s IT Talk reflecting on HMRC’s use of automated call-centre techniques comes news that the future of frontline healthcare might also lie in a robotic approach.
Type “Sensely NHS” into Google and up will pop full details of Olivia, the artificially intelligent virtual nurse, who “guides patients naturally through their personal healthcare needs, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.”
Olivia lives in the Sensely App on phones or tablets. Patients at Lion health, in Stourbridge, and St Margaret’s Well Surgery, in Halesowen, are already familiar with Olivia because they are taking part in an NHS trial.
They see Olivia on their screens, asking them questions and listening to their answers. They watch her lips move even see her blink.
When Olivia has heard sufficient detail, she advises on a course of action. Next steps may be self-medication via the local pharmacy, a referral to an NHS 111 clinician or an appointment with the GP.
In extreme cases, the App may ask the patient to dial 999.
The processes Olivia is programmed with are the same as those used by NHS 111 call handlers.
The concern will always be that talking to a machine can never be the same as talking to a real person.
An empathetic sound can be programmed in but it can still feel as if it is not quite scratching where the itch is.
If successful, though, Olivia is likely to ease that increasing problem of pressure on GP appointments.
If enough diagnoses can be diverted away from, or around, GPs, it could help those who really need to see one.
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