The framework procurement deal agreed with Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust and Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals covers 70,000 clinicians across 15 acute and community trusts and all ICBs, including 1,239 GP practices, spanning emergency departments, outpatient services and primary care.

Ravinder Kaur Sahota, group chief information officer at the Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust and Sandwell and West Birmingham Trust said: ‘Dudley had seen first-hand what was possible. Our clinicians were spending less time on documentation and more time with patients, and that told us we needed to find a way for the whole region to benefit. We built the clinical safety case, the business case, and the evidence base so that other trusts would not have to start from scratch. This framework shows what we can achieve when the NHS works collaboratively to get safe, effective AI into the hands of clinicians at scale.'

NHS England has set an expectation that ICBs and providers will adopt ambient voice technology from April 2026, in line with national guidance on safe AI deployment and the Medium Term Planning Framework.

Deployment across the region has already begun in phases, with The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, Walsall Healthcare NHS and The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust going live in May 2026, followed by Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust.