Innovation in healthcare advances deliberately, and for good reason. Established clinical practices earn the trust of healthcare professionals by ensuring patient safety, and any change must be rigorously evaluated. Transformation of existing workflows, however flawed they may be, rarely succeeds through top-down disruption. Instead, meaningful change that improves efficiency and patient outcomes emerges from empowering clinicians and healthcare organisations to co-design tools that integrate seamlessly into their practice, address tangible problems in the delivery of care, and safeguard patient safety above all.
The Newcastle Hospitals experience: Follow-up Finder in action
Our Follow-Up Finder partnership with Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust demonstrates what deliberate, user-centric innovation looks like in real clinical environments. The project started because thrombosis nurse specialists were attempting to identify potential cases of venous thromboembolism (VTE) from 900 radiology reports every day by manually reviewing likely scan types in order to ensure these patients the most appropriate care as quickly as possible. Despite the team’s expertise and commitment, the process was fragmented, time-consuming, and carried the inherent patient safety risk that a critical diagnosis could be delayed or overlooked.
VTE is a life-threatening condition that is a leading cause of death and disability in worldwide. Within the NHS it is a major issue. It causes over 25,000 preventable deaths annually and costs the NHS an estimated £640 million each year. Timely identification of clots is a critical success factor to reduce the morbidity of this condition.
Instead of approaching the problem with a generic “off-the shelf” solution, Solventum and Newcastle Hospitals took a collaborative, iterative route. Clinicians, digital leads and Solventum’s engineers worked side-by-side to design and implement an AI-enabled tool that reviews radiology reports in real time and generates an accurate VTE patient list directly within the trust’s electronic patient record system.
Crucially, the objective was not to automate the diagnostic process, but to improve the information flow downstream. To put it differently, the system does not replace professional clinical judgement, but offers an integrated platform that ensures the diagnosis is picked up by the appropriate care teams efficiently and seamlessly in their existing systems, and in an actionable format.
The involvement of these care teams all along the conception, implementation and deployment of the system was essential. The Follow-up Finder-VTE solution grew through bi-weekly development sessions, live testing against real-world scan reports, and continuous feedback loops from frontline staff. Nurses and consultants shaped the workflows. Thrombosis specialist validated outputs. Governance teams ensured safety and alignment with existing processes. Every iteration deepened mutual trust and strengthened shared ownership of the final solution.
What makes the Newcastle Hospitals approach different
In order to foster trust in the system, it was very important to focus on a controllable, transparent and explainable model. The resulting system was therefore tuned at every iteration, gradually increasing its accuracy based on the feedback by clinicians. From the start, we prioritised sensitivity – we did not want to miss any clots – but the system’s performance has impressed the clinical team with its specificity too. The current version of the algorithm has a sensitivity over 99.9% and a rate of false negatives lower than 0.1% – an average of 1 a day. Having the thrombosis specialist involved from the onset of this evaluation was a critical aspect for building trust in the system.
Integration with existing workflows and systems was another critical success factor. Newcastle Hospitals’ IT teams worked closely with Solventum integration specialists to enable seamless communication between both organisation’s systems, and, most importantly, to ensure that the results were delivered in an environment that the clinicians were familiar with, in this case, the Electronic Patient Record. By embedding this approach, the partnership delivered technology that responded to tangible, front-line challenges faced by clinicians instead of disrupting clinical practice. The result is a reliable digital tool that surfaces essential diagnostic information when needed, augmenting rather than replacing professional judgment. Clinicians have been able to adopt it quickly and confidently.
Results and lessons learnt
The project impact has been significant. The trust has seen a 48% increase in identification of new VTE cases and a 3.5 fold increase in hospital-acquired thrombosis (HATs) detection which has resulted in a 40% reduction in avoidable HATs.
For patients, this means faster initiation of anticoagulation, earlier access to thrombectomy or thrombolysis where required, and reduced harm from delayed or missed diagnoses. Review of reports highlighted in the AI-driven list enables urgent intervention for patients who otherwise would not have been timely referred.
The solution releases approximately two hours of nursing time per day, previously spent manually reviewing reports. This time is reinvested into direct clinical care, including patient counselling and care coordination. The solution integrates directly into the electronic patient record, allowing the thrombosis nursing team to focus on patient care rather than manual report screening. A sophisticated Trustwide HAT dashboard now enables clinical boards to monitor and investigate potentially preventable events, supporting continuous quality improvement.
At a trust level, it has driven £400,000 efficiency savings, released 200 bed days and reduced readmission.
Another key outcome is a cultural shift. Staff trust the system because they helped to build it, understand how it works, and can see the immediate benefits for patients and services. The Trust is now ready to embrace additional digital health solutions, including, among others, the expansion of Follow-up Finder to additional clinical use cases in which information flow gaps persist.
This experience demonstrates that the most transformative innovations in digital health are often the most grounded. When technology is co-designed with clinicians, built iteratively, and delivered transparently, it earns trust. And trust is what ultimately accelerates adoption, impact, and long-term change.
Trust is the foundation for innovation
In the wider context, what has been achieved at Newcastle Hospitals hits key ambitions of the NHS 10 Year Health Plan by shifting from analogue to digital and increasing efficiency. But before that can be accomplished, it’s crucial to lay a foundation built on trust to support sustainable digital progress. With this starting point, strong partnership working can grow, and incremental innovations can make meaningful, lasting impacts. Healthcare providers and industry partners need to build together, not apart, to achieve an NHS that is fit for the future.
By David Montano, EMEA Portfolio Manager – Clinician Productivity Solutions, Solventum