Helena Langford

Fellowship Bio

I am a Clinical Informatics Pharmacist, interested in responsible AI adoption to enhance patient care. The fellowship strengthened my experience in digital transformation and provided valuable insight into digital clinical safety and governance, guiding me to specialise further in these areas.

Fellowship Project

Preparing for outpatient appointments can be time consuming and contribute to clinician administrative burden. This can reduce time available for direct patient care and impact clinician wellbeing. Epic’s Outpatient Insights summarisation tool uses the GPT 4.1 large language model (LLM) to generate concise patient history summaries from electronic patient record notes, reducing the need for manual review. The overall goal of the project was to support deployment of this tool, dependent on a clinical evaluation of summary quality, followed by a pilot within gastroenterology and healthcare for older people outpatient clinics. My role involved working closely with the multidisciplinary project team to drive delivery and acting as project support lead for the clinical evaluation of LLM generated summaries. Regarding the clinical evaluation, I supported preliminary testing of the tool, designed the clinical evaluation protocol, drove delivery through clinician recruitment and clinical evaluation workshops, and supported data analysis. I also contributed to wider deployment planning, reviewing compliance with regulations, progressing work on the clinical safety case and facilitating a hazard workshop, and supporting with plans for the pilot phase and ongoing monitoring. Having completed data collection for the clinical evaluation, we are currently performing data analysis. Review of the results of the clinical evaluation and completion of the clinical safety case will inform the decision to proceed with a pilot. A 12-week pilot is planned in gastroenterology and healthcare for older people to assess impacts on efficiency and clinician wellbeing, supporting decisions regarding wider deployment.

Fellowship Testimonial

The fellowship has provided me with an excellent foundation in clinical AI, through workshops, learning from experts, and learning resources provided. It has also given me a much greater appreciation of the end-to-end processes required to safely implement digital systems across an NHS trust. I particularly enjoyed the opportunity for hands-on learning and working within a multi-disciplinary project team, which provided insight into different perspectives and roles in digital transformation. Completing Clinical Safety Officer training and gaining practical clinical safety experience in the fellowship project has opened up new career opportunities and led me into a new role as Digital Medicines Governance and Clinical Safety Pharmacist. The fellowship has given me the opportunities and confidence to connect with a wide range of professionals working in AI and digital pharmacy at a regional and national level. This has significantly broadened my professional network and created valuable opportunities for ongoing collaboration. I have also valued and enjoyed opportunities to present on clinical AI and promote responsible adoption in education settings and in regional and national networks. I look forward to building on the relationships and knowledge gained through the fellowship, using them to advocate for responsible AI adoption and to drive innovations that improve patient outcomes within pharmacy and beyond.