P2How we deliver · NHS and healthcare providers
How can a clinic answer more calls without putting patients at risk?
Patient access and AI reception for healthcare providers
For a healthcare provider losing patients to engaged phone lines and slow replies, we advise on where AI can help safely, build a patient portal, set up an AI receptionist for routine calls with clear hand-offs to staff, put governance around it, and train clinic teams to use it.
- Who it is for
- NHS and healthcare providers
- Sector
- Healthcare
- Size
- Large company
- Services
- 5 services, joined up
P2.1
The usual starting point
Clinic phone lines are busiest exactly when patients want to book, and unanswered calls often become bookings somewhere else.
Routine questions about appointments, directions and preparation fill reception time that clinic teams needed for the patients in front of them.
Any use of AI has to protect patient data, never give clinical advice, keep a person in charge and stand up to scrutiny from the provider's governance board.
P2.2
The system at a glance
What we build, what it connects to, and who uses it.
What we buildPatient portal
Patient portal · book, message
We build and look after this part.
- 02 · Build Patient portal: Web application development
- 06 · Launch Clinic team training: AI training for teams
The diagram in words
- Patient, online or phone (people)
- Patient portal, book, message (what we build)
- AI receptionist, routine calls (what we build)
- Booking API, one service (what we build)
- Clinic diary, group system (existing system)
- Clinic team, hand-offs (people)
- Call review, governance (what we build)
Connections:
- Patient → Patient portal
- Patient → AI receptionist
- Patient portal → Booking API
- AI receptionist → Booking API (AI at work)
- Booking API → Clinic diary
- AI receptionist → Clinic team (AI at work)
- AI receptionist → Call review
P2.3
How we deliver it, stage by stage
Discovery, build, launch, grow and ongoing: each step and the service behind it.
- 01 · Discovery · Where AI helps, and where it must not
AI consulting
Run workshops with clinical, governance and operations leads, listen to consented call recordings, and agree what AI may handle, what always goes to a person, and how success will be judged.
Touches: Clinic team, Call review
- 02 · Build · Patient portal
Web application development
Build a secure, accessible portal for booking, changing and cancelling appointments, preparation guides and messages to the clinic, connected to the provider's booking system.
Touches: Patient portal, Booking API, Clinic diary
- 03 · Build · AI receptionist for routine calls
AI receptionist
Set up an AI receptionist that answers overflow and out-of-hours calls, handles bookings and routine questions through the portal's booking service, and passes anything clinical, urgent or uncertain to a person with a summary.
Touches: AI receptionist, Booking API
- 04 · Build · Safety and data protection
AI governance and UK GDPR
Support the DPIA and clinical safety review, keep data in the UK, set guardrails against clinical advice, record every call outcome, and agree how calls are reviewed.
Touches: Call review, AI receptionist
- 05 · Launch · Pilot, then roll-out
AI receptionist
Start with one clinic's overflow calls, review outcomes every week with the clinic team, then extend clinic by clinic.
Touches: AI receptionist, Clinic team
- 06 · Launch · Clinic team training
AI training for teams
Train receptionists and clinic managers on the portal, on reading AI call summaries and on when to step in, with short written guides for new starters.
Touches: Clinic team, Patient portal
- 07 · Grow · The next opportunities
AI consulting
Review the first months with the board and agree the next areas to explore, under the same rules for safety and review.
Touches: Call review
- 08 · Ongoing · Monitoring and review
AI governance and UK GDPR
Review a selection of calls and every escalation each month, with changes to prompts and guardrails recorded and approved.
Touches: Call review, AI receptionist
P2.4
How the services connect
Why one partner across every stage matters.
- The AI receptionist books through the same service as the portal, so a booking made by phone appears in the patient's account and the clinic diary at once.
- Governance is designed alongside the build, not after it, so sign-off comes from evidence the system already records.
- Training uses the real hand-off screens and call summaries, so clinic teams practise on exactly what they will use.
P2.5
How we work with your team
- Governance
- A steering group with clinical, governance and operations leads, a clinical safety review, and decisions logged for the board.
- Data protection
- UK GDPR from the start: a DPIA, UK data residency, the minimum data at each step, callers told they are speaking to an AI, and recordings kept only as long as agreed.
- Accessibility
- The portal is built to WCAG 2.2 AA, and a person is always available by phone for anyone who prefers not to use the portal or the AI.
- With their team
- Work with the provider's IT team on single sign-on, the booking system and change control, and leave documentation they own.
P2.6
What you get
- Patients can book, change or cancel an appointment at any hour, online or by phone.
- Overflow and out-of-hours calls are answered rather than lost, and anything clinical reaches a person with a clear summary.
- Reception teams spend more of their time with the patients in the clinic.
- Every AI call outcome is recorded and reviewed, which makes governance sign-off straightforward.
Built for small teams too. A single practice or clinic can start with online booking or an AI receptionist for overflow calls, under the same safety checks.
P2.8
What you can check
The standing promises behind this work, and where to read them.
Accessibility to WCAG 2.2 AA
We design and test to WCAG 2.2 AA, by keyboard and screen reader as well as by tools, and help you keep an accessibility statement.
How we work →UK GDPR and DPIAs
Personal data is part of the specification: what is processed, why, where and for how long. We help you run a DPIA when a project needs one.
Security and trust →Hosting region
Hosting in UK data centres or on your own infrastructure, and AI providers set up not to train on your data.
DevOps and hosting →Handover documents
Code in your repositories, plus a runbook and documentation written as we go, so your own team or another supplier could pick it up.
Code ownership →Support terms
Support with agreed response times, monitoring and security updates, set out before work starts.
Support and maintenance →We run this ourselves
DeskZap is hosted, monitored and supported by us, so the way we look after your system is how we look after our own.
See DeskZap →
P2.9
Technology and timescale
A pilot at one clinic, then a clinic-by-clinic roll-out.
P2.10
Services covered
- 01AI consultingWhere AI helps, and where it must not · The next opportunities
- 02Web application developmentPatient portal
- 03AI receptionistAI receptionist for routine calls · Pilot, then roll-out
- 04AI governance and UK GDPRSafety and data protection · Monitoring and review
- 05AI training for teamsClinic team training
T+99Next step
Talk it through with us
A free 30-minute first chat, with no obligation. Tell us what is getting in the way; we tell you honestly what we would do, roughly what it would take, and whether it is worth doing at all.