‘More time listening, less time typing’: How Microsoft Dragon Copilot is helping NI clinicians focus on care

 

Microsoft has today introduced Dragon Copilot to the UK’s NHS – an AI assistant for clinical workflow that blends Dragon Medical One (DMO) natural language voice dictation with the ambient listening capabilities of Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX) Copilot.

 

Reigstered with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) as a Class 1 medical device, Dragon Copilot can capture clinical conversations and turn them into clinical notes. It also harnesses AI to draft documentation and automate follow-up tasks.

 

The goal? Ease admin pressure and improve the quality of clinician–patient interactions.

 

 

 

Dragon Copilot enables automated, multi-party ambient note creation, dictation capabilities, along with customisable texts and templates, AI prompts, and more by combining three capabilities in one interface:

In the UK and Ireland, more than 200 clinicians with a wide range of medical disciplines across seven healthcare organisations tested Dragon Copilot as part of a private preview programme that involved over 10,000 consultations.

 

Clinical AI assistants are transforming healthcare, offering a number of benefits for clinicians and patients alike. Dr Henry Morriss, Emergency Physician and Director of Clinical Informatics at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, who has been helping test the system, says the value of ambient voice AI starts with fidelity to the real-world consultation.

 

“The main benefit of using ambient voice is simply that it takes your voice and your relationship with the patient, and delivers it in a method you can easily see and edit,” he says.  In high-pressure hospital settings, the gains compound, Henry says. “I spend a lot of time speaking to patients to try and work out what’s wrong. Without ambient, I’ve got to go back to the desk and type that up. “And as I come to type, I realise, ‘I’ve forgotten quite a lot of that.’ With ambient, I get back and there it is. It’s made me get diagnostic answers quicker.”

 

It has also “helped offload a cognitive burden – not having to type it”, giving him more time to review what was said and thus improve diagnostic clarity.

 

While ambient voice AI is a powerful component of Dragon Copilot, it’s only one part of a broader clinical AI assistant designed to support end-to-end workflows.

 

By combining ambient listening, speech recognition, and fine-tuned generative AI, Dragon Copilot enables clinicians not only to capture conversations, but also to automate routine documentation, generate after-visit summaries, and streamline follow-up tasks. This holistic approach helps reduce administrative burden. 

 

Dragon Copilot combines fine-tuned generative AI with Dragon Medical One’s speech capabilities, which have helped clinicians document billions of patient records, and Dragon Ambient eXperience’s (DAX) ambient AI technology, which has assisted over three million ambient patient conversations across 600 healthcare organisations in the past month alone.

With these ambient AI capabilities, organisations in the US have already realised significant outcomes:

 

 

In addition to Class 1 medical device certification, Dragon Copilot meets ambient voice technology (AVT) guidelines set out by NHS England, including NHS DTAC (Digital Technology Assessment Criteria), DPIA Data Protection Impact Assessment), ISO/IED 27001 (Azure), and NHS DCB-0129 (clinical safety).

 

 

Patients “feel they’re being listened to more,” with the introduction of clinical AI assistants, says Henry. In a recent Microsoft-commissioned report, 40% of patients surveyed reported having a consultation where they felt the clinician was too focused on their screen to provide their full attention.

 

Even with the best seating plan, Henry notes, “I’m still, at some point, interacting with that computer. Ambient AI removes that factor.”

 

Dr Peter‑Marc Fortune, Paediatric Intensive Care Physician and Chief Medical Information Officer at the Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, agrees that clinical AI assistants like Dragon Copilot “should reduce the burden of ensuring that [clinicians are] capturing everything, so they can actually focus on the interaction with the patient.”

 

Peter-Marc says consultations now feel more “face-to-face… like would have happened in the GP surgery 20 years ago, before everybody had PCs on their desk.

“The most important thing is to develop a relationship with a patient.”

 

Notes need to be verified by the clinician, of course, but this can be done later, away from the patient, avoiding any disruption during those conversations. Henry notes that reducing manual typing also lowers the mental load and frees clinicians to think.

 

“My interactions with the patient are probably more elaborate,” he says, “because I’ve got a chance to go into the information more, knowing I don’t have to remember it all to type it up.”

 

In practice, using the technology means narrating key steps and findings during patient consultations can now be done without breaking eye contact: “I’m now going to examine your abdomen… it’s tender on the right-hand side”, for example.

 

And improved accuracy underpins safer care. Peter-Marc and his colleagues see “a real opportunity for capturing the detail of a conversation,” with potential well beyond outpatients. Think multidisciplinary team meetings where ambient capture now “picks up a number of comments, little snippets of information” that historically would be lost in a hurried “brain dump.”

 

 

Peter-Marc says it’s essential the technology “fits efficiently into the workflow. We’re continuously focused on reducing clicks [so] we certainly don’t want to introduce a new technology that adds to the workload.”

 

Henry echoes that the technology needed to tick all the boxes on his buyer’s checklist: accuracy, tight integration with existing electronic health records, and a trustworthy partner with proven large‑language‑model expertise.

 

As UK healthcare organisations explore roll‑outs across outpatient, inpatient and emergency care, clinicians using the tech emphasise two key principles: make the human connection central and make the workflow simpler. Dragon Copilot is built to do both, so doctors can spend more time listening, and patients can feel more heard.

 

“Dragon Copilot is transforming the healthcare landscape by assisting with time-consuming administrative tasks – such as documentation, referrals, and after-visit summaries – freeing up valuable time for patient care,” adds Jacob West, Managing Director, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Microsoft UK.

 

“By streamlining workflows and embedding into electronic patient records, Dragon Copilot not only boosts operational efficiency, it also supports clinician wellbeing and retention. “It’s an important component in the effort to build a more resilient and compassionate healthcare system across the NHS and beyond.”

 

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