Title of project
Symbot – AI Voice Chatbot Patient Symptom Platform
Background
Clinicians are recommended to complete symptom checks, or PROMs (patient reported outcome measures), with/for their oncology patients using the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (USA National Cancer Institute). However, clinicians will almost never cover the entire list of 88 measures, which is highly likely to lead to the loss of key insights on how treatment may be affecting patients, particularly over the longer term when patients are discharged from secondary care.
Project
The project will run over a total of 10 months, commencing in March 2025 and concluding in January 2026.
The project aims to develop an AI voice chatbot patient symptom platform (Symbot) to aid in data collection and insight gathering and allow comprehensive and quick assessment of patient symptoms or side effects.
It is anticipated that using a voice chatbot to complete symptom assessments with patients will save clinician time, uncover symptoms that may not be typically detected, and capture the data of those patient inputs in a standardised way.
The project is focussed on the development of a minimum viable product (MVP) for the purposes of user acceptability testing (clinicians, NHS eco-system and patients) to allow a robust assessment of the concept.
Benefits
Oncology Patients:
- Delivering more thorough and consistent levels of care
- Identifying and addressing symptoms that might otherwise go unnoticed
- Better and earlier interventions on treatment plans and services
- Access to more acceptable methods for collection of PROMs that align with patient users’ requirement for “human-like” interfaces.
The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre NHS Foundation Trust:
- Allowing clinicians more patient facing time as well providing individualised care
- Structured data capture of patient symptoms, in the longer term linked to Electronic Patient Records (EPR).
- Opportunities for new treatment insights and how to serve patients better
- Potential commercial revenue through a spin-out new company
- Demonstrate innovative and leading practices
- This anonymised data collection has the potential over time to provide valuable insight on the efficacy and impact of treatment on patients.
Pfizer:
- Supporting an NHS Trust to innovate and improve patient outcomes
- Insight into how treatments are affecting patients and where to improve
- Reputation/sharing innovation across NHS Trusts
- Potential scalability across tumour types and therapy areas
- Insight and data about the performance and user acceptability of the Symbot model in collecting PROM data in patients receiving CDK4-6 inhibitor therapy for breast cancer
- Insight and data about the suitability of the Symbot model as a potential value-added service for Pfizer customers.
Outcomes
Between March 2025 and January 2026:
- Develop a minimum viable product (MVP) version of Symbot for the purposes of user acceptability testing (clinicians and patients)
- Deploy the Symbot MVP in a pilot/testing environment within CCC to assess the opportunity within the chosen pathway in terms of:
- Delivering more thorough and consistent levels of care
- Identifying and addressing the symptoms that might otherwise go unnoticed
- Better and earlier interventions on treatment plans and services
- Allowing clinicians more patient-facing time as well providing individualised care
- Improvements in structured data capture of patient symptoms
- Opportunities for new treatment insights and how to serve patients better
- Develop a features roadmap and launch plan for commercialisation.
Financial arrangement and resource allocation
The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre NHS Foundation Trust will contribute:
- Funding: £31,200
- Human resource support: 1,075 hours
Pfizer UK Ltd will contribute:
- Funding: £131,380
- Human resource: 67 hours
