Beset by seemingly endless caseloads and responsibilities, within the UK National Health Service (NHS) and other healthcare systems globally, burnout among general practitioners (GPs) is on the rise.
A 2024 survey of 3,200 GP registrars (those in training to become fully-fledged GPs) by the British Medical Association (BMA) found that almost three-quarters of respondents are experiencing as a direct result of their clinical posting. In another survey by the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP),
To address clinician burnout, AI is playing an increasing role. In radiology, the technology is expediting the annotation of CT and MRI scans, helping practitioners with their caseloads.
Feeding into GP burnout, GPs鈥� considerable administrative duties are viewed as a key pain point. In a separate survey by the RCGP, 60% of GPs reported that they don’t have enough time to adequately assess and treat patients during appointments
Dragon Copilot, an AI-powered, voice-activated annotation software developed by Microsoft, aims to reduce some of the administrative burden facing GPs. The software launched in the US in May 2025 and is set to be released in the UK later this year.
Dr Simon Wallace, chief medical information officer (CMIO) and director of business strategy at Microsoft in the UK and Ireland, has been involved in the coordination of a six-month pilot of Dragon Copilot at select NHS Trusts.
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By GlobalDataDragon Copilot鈥檚 impending UK release follows the UK government鈥檚 announcement that the NHS will receive a 拢29bn ($39.1bn) funding boost over the next three years.
The funding boost for the NHS was announced during the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s UK Spending Review on 11 June. Of particular note is the UK government鈥檚 plan to increase the NHS鈥檚 technology budget by almost 50%, with 拢10bn ($13.5bn) of the total funding earmarked to bring the 鈥渁nalogue health system into the digital age鈥�.
吃瓜黑料网 Network sat down with Dr Simon Wallace at this year鈥檚 NHS ConFed expo in Manchester to learn more about Dragon Copilot and uncover Dr Wallace鈥檚 reaction to the NHS funding boost.
RL: Tell me about the pilot you are undertaking with the NHS for Dragon Copilot.
Dr Simon Wallace (SW): The pilot has now been underway for around six months. Involving around 200 patients and eight healthcare organisations, Dragon Copilot is essentially being fine-tuned. For example, maybe a drug鈥檚 name has not been spelt correctly by the software, or maybe there’s something that should have been said or captured by the software that wasn’t. We’ve really taken our time to do this in forensic detail so that we can go to general availability with a solution that we’re really confident meets the NHS workflows.
The overall feedback has been constructive, with patients expressing positivity over Dragon Copilot鈥檚 potential. We’re at a really pivotal point in this digital health journey, and I am convinced that this technology will make a comprehensive difference.
RL: What other insights have stemmed from the pilot?
SW: Clinicians involved in the pilot want to know that the software is safe, and so the rigour that we’ve been putting into our six-month pilot has been going through that due diligence process of making sure that it is. At an organisational level, clinicians have also wanted to know how the technology will support their practitioners, enhance the patient experience, and the general speed at which the process of patients going through the clinic will take.
RL: What customisability options does Dragon Copilot offer users?
SW: When a clinician sets the platform up, they have options to fine-tune it to what they want it to do. One of the key things here relates to style. Some clinicians will wish for the annotated notes to be more concise, whereas neurologists, for example, tend to like the verbiage so may prefer to have the platform鈥檚 concision option turned off.
Users can also customise how they want their template to look. There are options, for example, for the annotations to be laid out in paragraphs, or bullet points, with formal language, standard language, or even patient-friendly language, where, for example, 鈥榮hortness of breath鈥� will be annotated instead of its medical term, dyspnoea.
The platform also includes a library where you can have a whole series of prompts or templates. Perhaps I get an X-ray back and find that a patient has a suspicious shadow on his lung, and I need to get the chest doctors in to do an assessment. He’ll probably need to have a bronchoscopy and have a biopsy taken. So, I could have a prompt in cases like this, which is to send a letter to ca linical specialist, and Dragon Copilot would just generate that letter straight away.
All of this can be done in the background. There’s a balance here of customisation, but also standardisation of a clinical speciality, since some clinicians will likely want the output of their letters in a certain way. A clinical specialist will likely need, for example, to have an agreement on how they want their templates to look. Our overall role here is to provide end users with a toolkit and, in terms of customisation, allow them to do as much or as little as they want to do.
RL: What are your thoughts on the recently announced 拢29bn funding boost for the NHS?
SW: Any funding boost is really welcome. I think one of the key things to support that funding boost lies in having the appropriate digital technologies in place that are going to support it. That’s why many of us are looking forward to seeing the 10-Year Plan for the NHS. The transition from analogue to digital will be a key component, and the ability for healthcare organisations, whether they be in the acute, primary or mental health sectors, to have funding to support these tools would be most welcome.
