Using AI to Enhance Care Quality and Efficiency Award (NEW)

USING AI category
Using AI to Enhance Care Quality and Efficiency Award (NEW)
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How to apply

  1. Register an account.
  2. Start your entry (save it in-progress).
  3. Submit your entry to be in the running

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AI is transforming the way the NHS works across every part of the system. In clinical settings, it is helping staff detect disease earlier, make faster decisions and spend more time with patients. In back office and operational functions, it is cutting administrative burden, reducing waste and freeing up capacity. From AI supported diagnostics and discharge planning to automated payroll processing, fraud detection and smarter workforce scheduling, the scale and variety of what NHS teams are achieving with AI is growing rapidly.  

This award recognises NHS organisations and teams that have used AI to improve care quality, efficiency or both. Judges will look for AI that is genuinely embedded in everyday practice and trusted by the people who use it, with clear evidence of benefit to patients, staff or the wider system. Strong entries may come from any part of the NHS, whether clinical teams improving outcomes and access, or operational teams driving productivity and reducing cost. 

Eligibility

This award is open to all NHS organisations and teams, regardless of function or care setting. Solution providers helping the NHS and health sector organisations are invited to enter the HSJ Partnership Awards (entries open June 2026), which recognise public sector collaboration with the private sector.  

Ambition

The challenge and context within which your project, person or organisation is set alongside your goals and targets whether quantitative or qualitative, and how this aligns with national priorities.

  • Describe the problem or inefficiency your organisation identified and decided to address using AI, including the operational, financial or workforce context, and how this aligns with national priorities.
  • What was your vision for how AI could help, and what made your approach new or distinct from existing practice? Describe how your organisation identified and selected the AI tool or approach, and how staff were involved before wider rollout.
  • What specific goals and success measures did your organisation set, including any targets for time saved, cost reduction, error rates, staff experience or service improvement? 

Collaboration

The stakeholders' involvement in co-designing and delivering the project. How have patients, staff at all levels, communities and other parties worked together to realise the outcomes?

  • How were the staff who would be directly affected by the AI involved in identifying the need, selecting the approach, and implementing it?
  • Where relevant, how were patients or service users involved in shaping the initiative, including any implications for how their data is used or how services are delivered?
  • Describe any partnerships with other NHS organisations, ICBs, shared services or external bodies that were essential to delivery and explain what they made possible. 

Impact

The measurable benefits delivered to patients, staff, your organisation or the wider system. Provide data and evidence showing improvements to outcomes, quality, access, equity or efficiency.

  • What has been the measurable impact of the AI initiative on efficiency, productivity or cost? Provide quantitative and qualitative evidence where possible.
  • What has been the impact on staff, including on their experience of work, the burden of administrative tasks, and their ability to focus on higher value activity?  
  • What has been the wider benefit, whether to patients, to the organisation or to the system as a whole? Describe any unintended consequences, positive or negative, and how these were managed. 

Scale

How your work has been shared, adopted or replicated beyond your immediate team or organisation. This includes dissemination through publications, presentations, toolkits, partnerships or inspiring similar initiatives elsewhere.

  • How has the initiative been rolled out beyond its initial deployment, across additional teams, sites or organisations?  
  • What efforts have been made to share learning, governance frameworks or best practice with other NHS organisations, including through publications, national networks or toolkits?
  • What evidence is there that this approach could be adopted elsewhere, and what steps have been taken to make that possible? 

Sustainability

The potential for the project/work to continue and create lasting impact. Evidence of how it can be sustained or built upon.

  • How is the AI initiative embedded into business as usual, and what resource, funding and governance arrangements are in place to sustain it?  
  • How does the organisation identify and address risks from the AI, including errors, bias or unintended consequences, and what processes exist to act quickly if problems arise?
  • What evidence is there that this work is building long term capability in the organisation, and how does it contribute to the broader NHS goal of becoming a more efficient, AI enabled system? 

Using AI to Enhance Care Quality and Efficiency Award (NEW)

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To find out more

Partnership opportunities:  Sponsorship Sales Team
Awards entry enquiries: Delegate Sales Team
Judging and event management: Awards Support