Case Study: South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust achieves faster, more efficient clinical correspondence with BigHand

South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust Improves Clinical Correspondence Workflow with BigHand

South West London & St George's Mental Health NHS Trust, which serves around 1.1 million people and employs over 2,000 staff, sought to reduce clinicians’ administrative burden and improve turnaround of clinical correspondence after an earlier speech-recognition rollout did not achieve expected adoption. In 2018 the Trust engaged BigHand to augment its existing BigHand Clinical Correspondence and back-end auto-transcription solution with M*Modal Fluency Direct to give clinicians real‑time, front‑end speech recognition and greater autonomy over transcriptions.

BigHand led a clinically driven, phased pilot (30 initial users), appointed a Senior Responsible Officer, delivered intensive training and established a three-tier support model, integrating the solution with RiO and IAPTUS and tailoring templates per team. As a result, the Trust reports GP letters sent within two weeks rising by about 5% month-on-month, risk assessments completed within 48 hours improving month-on-month, and clinician time saved (approximately 20 minutes per letter for doctors and 15 minutes for nurses), delivering measurable efficiency and better clinician experience under BigHand’s deployment.

South West London & St George's Mental Health NHS Trust

Amallia Thomas

Transformation Project Manager