About Mental Health Matters

Mental Health Matters is one of the UK’s largest mental health charities, supporting around 15,000 people every month across NHS Talking Therapies, crisis services and psychological support. As a charity, its measure of value is simple: every minute a clinician doesn’t spend on documentation is a minute back with the people the service exists for.

Talking Therapies runs on documentation

Talking Therapies is one of the most documentation-heavy environments in UK healthcare. At baseline, MHM clinicians spent around 39 minutes writing up each patient. That keyboard time pulled attention away from the person in the room and pushed admin into the evening.

For a charity, the cost is direct. Time on notes is time not spent on care.

Tandem drafts the note, the clinician stays in control

MHM rolled out Tandem’s AI scribe across its Talking Therapies sites in Sefton and Warrington, with Northumberland in planning. Tandem captures the session in real time and drafts a structured note in seconds for the clinician to review. Bespoke templates were built for each site, and a direct Iaptus integration transfers the finished note into the medical record system in one click. Nothing enters the record without the clinician’s approval.

Documentation time fell 57%, and the day changed with it

MHM baselined clinicians at onboarding and re-surveyed them once Tandem was embedded, alongside platform usage data. Documentation time per note fell from around 39 minutes to around 17, a saving of roughly 12 to 22 minutes on every note. Across a typical caseload and MHM’s monthly note volume, that adds up to an estimated 230 to 410 hours of clinical time returned to patient care each month, the equivalent of one and a half to two and a half full-time clinicians.

The time came with headspace. As Ryan Goodband, a high intensity therapist at Sefton Talking Therapies, described it:

“With Tandem, we now have consistency across our clinical documentation, with comprehensive and professional session notes generated in seconds. The time saved gives our therapists more time for preparation, reflective space after a session, and mindful, restorative pause during clinics.”

For clinicians, the most immediate change is the mental load that documentation used to carry. As one therapist put it:

“I love Tandem. I have found it helps with mental load immensely. It is great for summarising clinical contacts with a good amount of detail.”

They also point to the confidence the drafts give them. One described the notes as “professional, so it helps me to word things clinically and professionally,” while keeping the clinician in control of the final version.

That confidence showed up in the survey too. In MHM’s follow-up survey, 90 per cent of clinicians said Tandem’s notes needed no edits or only minor ones, a self-reported figure from 26 respondents.

What the charity gets back is capacity

For a charity, Tandem pays off in clinical capacity rather than cash. The same clinicians, seeing the same patients, now spend far less of each session on the screen: 65 per cent spend a tenth or less on the computer, and just over a third none at all. That attention goes back to the person in the room.

Tandem’s AI scribe is CE marked under the European Medical Device Regulation (EU MDR). Patient data is processed within Europe, no audio is stored, and patient data is never used to train AI models. For a service handling some of the most sensitive conversations in healthcare, that foundation is built in from the start.

See how Tandem fits your service

Tandem’s AI scribe is live with mental health and Talking Therapies providers across the UK. Talk to our team about what it looks like for your service.

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