Surrey & Sussex ICB and Healthtech Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex

The first independent evaluation of Automated Registrations confirms what practices already knew and puts numbers behind it. NHS Surrey & Sussex ICB funded Automated Registrations across Surrey GP practices for 12 months. Evaluated independently by Unity Insights and commissioned by Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex, the results show that automating new patient registrations saves staff time, transforms the quality of data collected, and delivers a measurable return on investment.

⚡ 97% of all registrations across Healthtech-1 practices fully automated

💙 85% of registrations in Surrey Heartlands completed without any administrator action

⏳ 9 minutes saved per registration where admin input is still needed

📊 £1.48 returned for every £1 invested across all modelled scenarios

🌱 Ethnicity coding completeness up from 23.8% to 96.4%

The challenge 🤔

Registering a new patient with a GP has always been one of primary care's most persistent admin burdens. Before automation, the standard process required a practice administrator to manually input patient details into the clinical system – taking around 15 minutes per registration, with limited data collected and significant variation in record quality.

For Surrey & Sussex ICB's 99 Surrey practices, that meant thousands of hours each year spent on a task with no clinical value, records that didn't reflect the full picture of a patient's health, and missed opportunities to identify risk factors at the earliest possible moment.

"Managing registrations across four branches used to be incredibly time-consuming." — Arif Ladha, Practice Business Manager, The Integrated Care Partnership

The approach 🖥️

Surrey & Sussex ICB funded Automated Registrations from Healthtech-1 for all its Surrey GP practices across a 12-month period, as part of its primary care testbeds programme. Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex supported the evaluation, with independent analysis conducted by Unity Insights using pseudonymised data from the clinical systems of 15 participating sites.

The evaluation covered quantitative and health economic analysis, looking at the impact on SNOMED coding completeness, administrative workflow, and system-wide value across three modelled scenarios.

Key features of Healthtech-1 Automated Registrations used across the rollout included:

• Automated creation of patient records directly in EMIS and SystmOne, eliminating manual data entry

• A configurable local form to capture the additional information each practice needs

• Automatic SNOMED coding applied at the point of registration

• Signals functionality to flag safeguarding concerns or health risks to staff

The results 💙

Saving time

97% of all Healthtech-1 registrations were fully automated. Within Surrey Heartlands, 85% required zero input from an administrator. For the minority that still needed some human involvement, the automation saved an average of 9 minutes per registration — time that went straight back to staff for patient-facing work.

"Since introducing Healthtech-1, around 95% of our registrations are automated. The customisable form captures everything we need first time, cutting out manual data entry and reducing patient follow-up, which frees up staff capacity for other priorities." — Arif Ladha, Practice Business Manager, The Integrated Care Partnership

Transforming data quality

The evaluation found dramatic improvements in the completeness of structured clinical data captured at the point of registration:

• Ethnicity coding: 23.8% → 96.4%

• Alcohol screening coding: 24.0% → 75.9%

Richer records from day one means health teams can identify risk factors earlier, segment populations more accurately, and target preventative interventions where they're most needed — turning registration from a paperwork bottleneck into a launchpad for proactive care.

"We have found this system to be extremely efficient and valuable to our workflow. Its automated coding capabilities have significantly reduced manual effort, saving our team considerable hours while improving overall productivity." — Lesley Cushen, Operations Manager, The Grove Medical Centre (Surrey)

Delivering economic value

The independent health economic analysis found positive returns across every scenario modelled over a five-year period:

• £65k net present value for the selected Surrey Heartlands sites (BCR: 1.48)

• £287k if adopted across all Surrey GP practices (BCR: 1.48)

• £679k if rolled out across Surrey and Sussex (BCR: 1.58)

Benefits are driven primarily by administrative time savings, with additional modelled gains from reduced A&E attendances and improved population health management. The evaluators noted that real-world benefits are likely even higher: improved quality of life outcomes and reductions in secondary care activity couldn't be fully captured in the cost-benefit analysis due to data availability, but represent credible further upside.

Spread and scalability 🚀

Take-up within Surrey Heartlands was 92%. When the funded period ended, nearly 90% of those practices chose to continue paying for the service themselves, a real-world proof point that the value is tangible enough for practices to commit their own budgets.

Healthtech-1 is now live in over 1,600 practices across England. Evaluation findings show the benefits of automation grow with scale – particularly where adoption is coordinated across systems, licensing costs are optimised in bulk, and data is used to drive population-level interventions.

—

Contact

The full report and story from Health Innovation KSS can be found on their website.

If you'd like to learn more about automation at scale for your ICB, contact ali@healthtech1.uk.

For press enquiries, please contact press@healthtech1.uk.

Thank you to NHS Surrey & Sussex ICB, Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex, Unity Insights, Office for Life Sciences and all participating practices for their support throughout the evaluation and for sharing their findings.