From the voice of Melissa Lato, Product Director at X-on Health.
Over the last year, I have had the opportunity to work closely with practices as we’ve explored how advanced digital tools and artificial intelligence can support everyday healthcare . When we look at the NHS, digital transformation continues to accelerate. But innovation in primary care isn’t about introducing technology for its own sake, but about solving the real challenges practices face every day.
Building a roadmap for innovation in primary care means creating a future where new features and data-driven insights are seamlessly woven into patient care to enhance efficiency and personalise journeys. Technology shouldn’t be a collection of isolated updates. It must be a connected ecosystem designed to solve operational challenges, from the “8am rush” to administrative burnout affecting the whole practice.
As we reach the midpoint of 2026, I want to look back at the features we have released during the first half of this year and, more importantly, the thinking behind them. Our aim is to foster continuous innovation in primary care, focused on the needs and outcomes that matter most to practices and patients. The enhancements highlighted here are s practical, real-world examples of how we’re helping to empower healthcare professionals and practice staff to shape a more responsive, patient-centric system with a strong consideration around clinical safety.
Fostering patient autonomy and transparency
A responsive healthcare system respects a patient’s time and circumstances. For too long, the patient experience has been bottlenecked by the morning telephone queue. Patients call in, unaware of how busy the practice is or whether another route may be quicker.. This lack of visibility creates frustration and places immense pressure on reception teams.
To help address this, we launched Website Widgets. Think of these as a customisable “digital window” on the practice website that displays live queue status in real time, such as total callers or the longest wait time. Practices can filter this information by department e.g. Appointments, prescriptions, allowing patients to see how busy the practice is before dialling.
Better visibility gives patients greater awareness and more choice. When patients can see live capacity, they can choose whether to call back later or use an online service instead. As one of our practice users shared:
“In the spirit of transparency, anything that helps people make a decision – it might not reduce the queue, but it helps patients decide whether to call or go online.”
We have also rolled out enhancements to our Patient Callback Queue Position Webpage. Generic callback pages no longer met the needs of practices or patients. We now offer multiple, group-specific webpages, so if a patient requests a callback for a specific department, the URL and content they see are tailored to that service. Whether reminding patients about the NHS App, managing prescription requests or directing them to the right site in a multi-site practice, the information is always hyper-relevant to their care navigation.
Innovation in primary care should improve access for every patient. That’s why we are breaking down communication barriers and driving equitable access through Multilingual Support in Surgery Assist. Our AI digital assistant operates 24/7 on the practice website, but it cannot be patient-centric if it excludes parts of the community.
Surgery Assist can now natively translate over 100 languages via inline website code. It translates all deterministic, static content, including menu options, safety signposting and user help guides. If a patient needs to know how to access their medical record, the assistant provides clear instructions in their preferred language and signposts them to the NHS App. With built-in safety overrides, practices can toggle features on or off instantly via the portal, supporting safe, inclusive care navigation 24/7.
Related read: Health & Beyond provides multilingual patient access via digital assistant
Alleviating “phone fatigue” and reclaiming administrative time
We know that primary care teams are facing unprecedented operational pressures. Frontline staff cannot thrive when suffering from chronic “phone fatigue” or bogged down by manual, repetitive administrative processes. That’s why innovation in primary care should focus on removing friction from everyday workflows, giving teams more time to focus on the patients who need them most.
A major milestone on our roadmap this year was the introduction of integrated Voicemail Transcription within the Phonebar. Listening to lengthy voicemail messages on repeat prescription lines takes time. With our new transcription engine, staff no longer need to sit through minutes of audio. They can read the transcript at a glance, identify the patient’s needs instantly, and where appropriate, copy the text straight to the patient record.
The impact has already been clear . The dispensary team at Caythorpe & Ancaster Medical Practice, who process more than 2,500 phone-based prescription requests every single week, saved over two hours of administrative time weekly following implementation. It removes repetitive audio playback and allows the team to move more quickly from listening to action.
To further improve workflow efficiency, we’ve also introduced invitation-based Silent Monitoring directly within the Phonebar, enabling seamless peer observation and supervisor listen-in capabilities. This can be used for training, supporting medical students, providing additional input when required or just helping teams manage known difficult callers.
Continuous improvement is at the heart of what our team strives to do. We’ve continued to evolve Surgery Intellect, our ambient scribe powered by TORTUS, to ensure it fits into your daily workflow. Since January, we’ve introduced the much anticipated ‘File to Record’ capability, prioritising clinical safety through rigorous NHS England IM1 assurance. More recently, in partnership with TORTUS, we’ve added customisable medical note templates, allowing clinicians to format consultation summaries in a way that best suits their practice. These updates are all about one thing: removing friction and giving busy clinicians more time to focus on patient care.
We are also seeing encouraging early results from our Omni Consultation Voice Agent and Surgery-Led Appointment Booking, which are fundamentally transforming how practices manage patient contact. These features do more than just save time. They actively deflect routine enquiries, allowing staff to instead focus on complex care needs whilst offering equitable access for patients.
The Workflow Agent, that sits at the heart of Omni Consultations (OC) was recently self-certified as a Class I Medical Device under UK MDR (Medical Device Regulations) 2002, registered with the MHRA. I am proud to see how this particular innovation iis already making a positive impact for the first practices to implement it. Within the first full month, Stamford Hill Group Practice achieved a 54% reduction in missed calls compared with December 2025. This equated to 3,714 fewer missed calls and represented a significant improvement in patients’ ability to access support when needed. At the same time, average call waiting times reduced by 40%, improving patient experience and reducing frustration with long queues. Patient feedback highlighted improved access, shorter waits and greater satisfaction with the ability to contact the practice through their preferred channel.
We have also introduced Surgery-Led Appointment Booking, providing a seamless way to support the OC onward workflow directly from the triage screens. This removes the need to switch systems to schedule an appointment for the patient. Additionally, we are working with the NHS Notify team to reduce SMS costs across the practice, with more updates to come.
Finally, we are equally committed to refining the everyday experience. We understand that operational agility is often defined by small, high-impact improvements that streamline your day-to-day workflow. One example of this is the introduction of Calendar Overrides directly within the Phonebar back in February. This feature gives practice managers immediate control over the practice calendar status. Whether switching to emergency mode or closing appointments at short notice, these changes can be made instantly, helping practices respond quickly as pressures change.
Enabling data-driven decisions, not firefighting
Better decisions start with better visibility. Too often, telephony statistics, online consultation submissions and AI digital assistant interactions sit in separate systems, making it difficult for practices to build a complete picture of patient demand. Innovation in primary care shouldn’t just generate more data; it should help practices visualise data in one place, and turn that data into meaningful insight.
This year marked our migration to a brand-new reporting engine built on Google BigQuery and Microsoft Power BI, seeing the introduction of Enhanced Reporting. BigQuery processes massive, complex primary care datasets, enhancing tracking. Power BI translates these numbers into a deeply visual, interactive dashboard featuring dynamic charts and KPI tiles that let managers spot trends in seconds.
Within Enhanced Reporting, our new Weekday Selector allows managers to isolate specific days of the week to pinpoint exactly when high-pressure periods hit. We have also introduced a “People Answering” overlay directly onto call queue charts, enabling practice managers to visually map incoming patient demand against real-time staff availability.
Our overarching dashboard, Surgery Insights, unifies all of this telephony information with online consultations and NHS App usage into a single view. By overlaying total patient demand against actual FTE staffing levels, we take the guesswork out of workforce planning. Practices can transition permanently from “firefighting” to a proactive model of care delivery, proving the return on investment of their digital tools.
Not only that, we also introduced dedicated Surgery Intellect and Omni Consultation reports, providing practices with the data needed to analyse the impact of products and features, and how they are contributing to the efficiency of your surgery.
For me, this is one of the biggest opportunities for innovation in primary care. Better decisions don’t come from more dashboards. They come from giving practices the right information at the right time, so they can make informed decisions that benefit both patients and staff.
Supporting practices beyond implementation
The value of innovation in primary care doesn’t end when a new feature is released. It comes from helping practices optimise their workflows and continue to get the most from the technology they use.
We are committed to ensuring you derive maximum value from these innovations. Our monthly training webinars provide a practical forum for exploring new releases, sharing best-practice guidance tailored to your practice’s operational needs. I encourage you to join these sessions. They are a valuable investment of 30 minutes of your time. You can view past sessions here and the upcoming schedule here.
To further support your professional development, we have recently relaunched our Academy. The platform has been redesigned to align more closely with the realities of primary care, offering more relevant, accessible, and structured learning pathways. Whether you are looking for a quick guide or a short, comprehensive eLearning course, the Academy is designed to help your team build confidence and get the most from the technology available to them.
For immediate, step-by-step assistance, our Help Centre provides practical guidance, documentation, and the latest product updates.
Building stronger partnerships across primary care
Our partnerships go far beyond just rolling out new integrated features, they are about deep, meaningful integration with the Electronic Patient Record (EPR) systems you rely on every day.
Over the past six months, we’ve made incredible strides in expanding our ecosystem to better support your workflows. We are thrilled to have officially integrated with Medicus Health. This integration brings Surgery Connect’s Phonebar directly into the Medicus interface. Telephony and the patient record now sit in one place, removing the need to toggle between screens or rely on bolt-ons. The result is a smoother, faster flow between patient data and communication, designed to support safer and more efficient care.
Our collaborative efforts were also recognised on a national stage when we won the prestigious EMIS NUG ‘Product Partner Award 2026’ for our integration with EMIS. Importantly, the award was decided by the people who use these systems every day.
Looking ahead, we are currently working hand-in-hand with OneAdvance on an upcoming Vision integration tailored specifically for Scotland.
What’s next on the horizon?
Innovation never stops. Right now, our teams are actively developing On-Demand Outbound Agents to further improve practice workflows.
Working as a seamless extension to your team, these automated workflow voice agents are designed to initiate automated outbound calls directly from the Phonebar, reducing the need for manual dialing while supporting more consistent patient communication.
- Phase One: Appointment Reminders: Triggered directly from your Appointments Window, the agent will contact targeted patients, securely verify their identity, and deliver precise appointment details. Patients will have the option to acknowledge the reminder or cancel the slot, helping to reduce DNAs, while saving staff hours of administrative work. Staff can apply SNOMED codes upfront, ensuring the entire call outcome logs straight back to the clinical record.
- Phase Two: Campaigns and Community Support: Beyond reminders, these agents will scale to handle automated campaigns, delivering critical health information and signposting patients to relevant, local community services
Looking beyond individual features, our focus continues to be on supporting innovation in primary care, particularly community and neighborhood working. Primary care is shifting toward integrated local teams, and our communication ecosystem is evolving to match. By enabling seamless data sharing, routing, and collaborative communication across neighbouring practices and community hubs, we are directly helping practices achieve the goals of the NHS 10-Year Plan.
This is what innovation in primary care is really about. Not introducing technology for its own sake, but developing solutions that solve genuine challenges for practices and make a meaningful difference for the people delivering and receiving care.
Want to see these developments in practice?