Emergency Call Artificial Intelligence Pilot Trial

Background

The Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) receives over 1.5 million phone calls every year. Our call handlers ask a series of questions to determine how sick the patient is, and what ambulance response is appropriate. Occasionally, the words and language patients use to describe their illness does not match their severity, as well as these 999 phone calls being emotionally distressing. This can make it very challenging to give an accurate initial diagnosis when time is critical.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers one approach that can help call handlers identify how sick a patient is. Artificial intelligence has the benefit that it can listen to many hundreds and thousands of calls very quickly, and learn the words and language people use to describe their illness.

The Ambulance Service is trialling the use of AI with a company called Corti. This will last 4 months. During this trial phase there will be no change to ambulance normal practice - the AI will not be active and call handlers will be using the standard day-to-day system. The AI algorithm will be trained on a copy of the audio files to learn how patients in Scotland speak and use language. This AI system is not live, and there is no alteration to routine care.

How is data used and secured?

A copy of the audio data is securely transferred to a server, compliant with the required UK GDPR regulations. SAS has referred to the UK Regulator - the Information Commissioner's Office - to seek best practice guidance and compliance. Data is encrypted during transfer, with no human interaction with the audio contents. This means that no one outside of the ambulance service will access the verbal content of the 999 call.

Corti then retrieve these data from the server and feed it into their large language model. This medical language model has been trained on over 10 million other emergency calls to date. These Scottish data - with it's unique dialects and phrases - will enable the model to learn how people in Scotland call the ambulance service.

What happens to the data after the trial has finished?

After this 4 month phase, no more SAS data is transferred. The data that has been transferred is deleted. At this point, the anonymised summary findings will be provided and no more individual patient data is used.

Does this effect my care if I call the Scottish Ambulance Service?

No - all our call takers will continue with their standard practice. The 'live' version of the Corti system is not being trialled at this stage. This 4 month phase is considered a learning phase, where the AI can listen to a copy of an audio file to learn how patients in Scotland use words and language to describe their illnesses.

Can I opt out?

Yes - if you call 999 during this phase (April 2025 – August 2025) you can opt out of your data being analysed. Please contact sas.infogov@nhs.scot with the reference 'AI opt out', and please provide details of the date, time and phone number you used to call the ambulance service.