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Ufonia has developed Dora – an automated clinical assistant that can conduct routine clinical conversations with patients over the phone. This project will expand the use of Dora to help manage the care of patients undergoing cataract surgery across the Thames Valley. Dora has been conducting follow-up after cataract surgery, and patients are reporting they are highly likely to recommend it to others. This project will use Dora to conduct three other routine conversations with patients across the cataract pathway at four NHS hospital trusts. Ufonia aims to ensure that patients will receive a more convenient experience, whilst increasing the capacity for care by reducing the amount of clinical staff time conducting routine appointments.

One fifth of NHS carbon emissions are attributable to medicines, and this must be reduced to deliver a Net Zero NHS. Currently, expenditure is used to estimate these emissions. We urgently need better metrics to support carbon-informed decisions in medicines procurement and prescription. Our tool, PMI Classifier, addresses this need.

The pharmaceutical sector has validated green-by-design metrics which we are adapting and scaling to all applicable medicines, and integrating with a practical, robust decision-making framework to produce a user-friendly tool that enables carbon-footprint medicines information to be accessed as needed within healthcare. We hope our solution will drive transparency, yield opportunities to incentivise greener production, and empower carbon-informed medicine choices.

Inhaled anaesthetic and analgesic gases are the most environmentally damaging drugs used in healthcare. Nitrous Oxide (N2O) has 300 times the global warming impact of carbon-dioxide and is particularly harmful because of the huge amounts used. N2O is most commonly given combined with oxygen (Entonox, or 'gas and air'); it provides effective pain relief for >80% of women in labour, and millions of people worldwide undergoing minor injury treatment or small operations. Envirolieve will substantially reduce Entonox consumption, potentially by as much as 90%, enabling the same safe and effective pain relief but with dramatically less environmental harm.

Envirolieve is cost effective and simple to integrate with existing technologies and therefore has the potential to be rapidly adopted into practice.