Abstract

Background:
Multidisciplinary team (MDT) meetings bring specialists together to agree a treatment plan for each patient. Recording the outcome of every case often falls to a junior clinician, who must listen, interpret and write at the same time. Accurate records matter for medico-legal integrity, treatment planning and continuity of care. Evidence on whether ambient voice technology can support this task is limited.

Methods:
This whitepaper summarises a prospective comparative study by Bajalan, Kalpidis and Sinha at University College London Hospital, published as an abstract in the Journal of Cranio-Maxillo-Facial Surgery in 2026. Over six months, the authors recorded weekly 30-minute sarcoma MDT meetings. They documented the first 25 consecutive cases by standard practice and the next 25 with Accurx Scribe, powered by Tandem. Clinicians reviewed and edited the AI output before submission. The authors compared submitted documentation with the full recordings to count omissions and factual discrepancies, and they recorded documentation time.

Results:
The authors report that AI-assisted documentation had fewer omissions and factual inaccuracies, and needed fewer substantive amendments. They report that mean documentation time fell by two to three hours per MDT session. Clinicians reported lower cognitive burden, higher enjoyment of the MDT and a better ability to focus on the clinical discussion. The abstract doesn’t report raw counts, baseline times or statistical tests. The study covers 50 cases at one hospital and one specialty, and the two groups ran in sequence rather than at random.

Conclusion:
The authors report that an AI scribe used with clinician review produced fewer omissions and errors and shortened MDT documentation time. The evidence is early. Organisations considering ambient voice technology for MDT meetings should test it on their own recordings, keep clinician review in the workflow, confirm information governance for recording, and measure a local baseline.

References:
Bajalan M, Kalpidis P, Sinha D. Can artificial intelligence improve accuracy, efficiency and reduce time burden in multidisciplinary team meeting documentation? Journal of Cranio-Maxillo-Facial Surgery. 2026;54:109475.

NHS England. Guidance on the use of AI-enabled ambient scribing products in health and care settings.