Case Study: Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust achieves 25% more patient-facing time and same-day records with BigHand

Delivering service excellence and sustainability with BigHand technology

Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust, one of England’s largest mental health and disability trusts, faced clinicians spending hours each day on paperwork—traveling to offices to type notes and doing admin late into shifts—limiting patient-facing time. After a successful proof of concept, the Trust selected BigHand (using BigHand Digital Dictation and mobility software alongside M*Modal speech recognition) to remove manual processes, automate clinical information capture and release time to care.

BigHand implemented enterprise digital dictation and mobility tools, 3G-enabled access to patient records and a 24/7 central transcription team, with speech recognition to speed workflows. The results at the Trust include 2,500 Digital Dictation users (1,000 using speech recognition), ~10,000 dictations processed monthly, reduction in clinician admin time from ~4 hours to just over 1 hour, a rise from 3 to 5 patients seen per day (≈25% more face‑to‑face time), and same‑day dictation turnaround versus 6–8 weeks previously—improving record quality, safety and staff work/life balance thanks to BigHand.

Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust

Sarah Keetley

Transformation Lead