Autonomous telephone follow-up after cataract surgery
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A clinical investigation of an autonomous phone conversational agent for cataract surgery follow-up.
IRAS ID
297548
Contact name
Keith Boland
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Imperial College London
ISRCTN Number
ISRCTN16038063
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
The aim of the study is to provide high quality and safe automated telephone follow-up for patients after cataract surgery.
The UK’s ageing population is causing an increased demand for healthcare services that are exceeding clinical capacity. A large proportion of this clinical work is taken up by highly repetitive and low skill tasks. One area of care where improved efficiency is needed is cataract surgery which is the most common operation performed in the UK with nearly half a million operations done per year. Like most operations, cataract surgery requires a post-operative check to monitor for complications and assess patient satisfaction. This has historically been performed with a face-to-face visit. However, a recent Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) report stated that a hospital review of cataract surgery is not required if alternative follow-up arrangements are in place; hospitals are now providing telephone follow up after routine cataract surgery. Our solution would be to replace the human delivered phone consultation with Artificial intelligence voice conversation in the form of DORA (Digital-Online-Recording-Automation). The study will assess the safe use of DORA at two large NHS hospital trusts to see if DORA makes the same recommendations as a clinician.
Patients who are listed for routine cataract surgery will be eligible for this study.
The study will last up to 3 years and participants will receive a single phone call from DORA three weeks after their operation. This call will include several elements including cataract follow-up questions and patients’ queries. The conversation will be supervised by a clinician who can interrupt the call at any point if the system fails, the patient struggles to interact with it, or DORA does not collect sufficient information. After the phone call, several analyses will be conducted, including comparing DORA’s and the supervising clinician’s decisions.
REC name
London - Chelsea Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/PR/0767
Date of REC Opinion
1 Jul 2021
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion