CareLoop

Links:
- Presentation: https://www.canva.com/design/DAHDTGO5rn4/Tps0LvqSM07pfEACvM6mOA/edit

- YT App demo: https://youtube.com/shorts/j5DGSQmdGfI?feature=share

- YT Scene demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f24hV_fFHss

1. Problem

2. Idea & Solution

3. How it works

4. Use case 1

5. Use case 2

6. Impact

7. Reflection & Challanges

Healthcare communication often breaks down between healthcare touchpoints.

Patients interact with the healthcare system at multiple stages - booking an appointment, waiting for a consultation, being referred to specialists, or attending follow-up care. During these periods, symptoms can change significantly, yet these updates are rarely captured in a clear and structured way.

In some situations, this gap can have serious consequences.

A patient recovering from surgery at home may begin to develop worsening symptoms such as fever, severe pain, or confusion - early warning signs of complications or infection. While waiting for a follow-up appointment or trying to contact the hospital, these changes may not be communicated clearly or quickly enough to the care team.

Similarly, patients waiting months for specialist care may experience a gradual deterioration in their condition. Someone awaiting mental health support, for example, may struggle with worsening symptoms during the waiting period without an easy way to communicate those changes to clinicians.

Even when the situation is less urgent, the communication process itself often becomes fragmented and overwhelming.

Patients frequently try to share updates through multiple channels:

• phone calls to reception

• messages sent to the practice

• details remembered and explained later during the appointment

For patients, this can be exhausting. They may have to repeat the same information several times to different people, sometimes about sensitive or difficult health issues. When symptoms are complex or emotionally difficult to describe, repeating the story again and again can make the experience even more stressful.

For healthcare teams, this fragmented communication creates operational pressure. Reception and administrative staff often act as the first point of contact, managing large volumes of calls and messages every day. Without structured updates, they must manually gather information, relay messages, and attempt to prioritise cases with limited clinical context.

This administrative burden contributes to increasing pressure on healthcare teams. Instead of focusing on patient care, valuable time is spent chasing updates, clarifying information, and managing communication that could be structured more efficiently.

Clinicians also face the consequences of this gap. When information arrives late, incomplete, or scattered across multiple interactions, it becomes much harder to understand how a patient’s condition has evolved over time.

In practice, this means:

• clinicians often only see the patient’s condition at the moment of consultation

• symptom changes between appointments or referrals may not be recorded clearly

• patients must repeat their story across multiple interactions

• administrative teams spend significant time managing communication instead of supporting care

Accurx already improves communication across the NHS through tools such as:

• secure patient messaging

• structured questionnaires

• Accurx Scribe, which converts conversations into structured clinical notes

These tools demonstrate how technology can make healthcare communication clearer and more efficient.

However, communication can still become fragmented between appointments, referrals, and follow-ups, when updates about a patient’s condition are scattered across calls, notes, and memory.

CareLoop focuses on improving communication during these gaps.

CareLoop improves communication between patients and clinicians by keeping important health updates visible between healthcare touchpoints.

Instead of relying on a single description of symptoms, CareLoop allows patients to record short updates as their condition evolves while they wait for appointments, referrals, or follow-up care.

Patients can share updates in the way that feels most natural:

• speaking symptoms using voice input

• typing short notes or updates

• describing symptoms in everyday language

CareLoop then helps transform these updates into information that healthcare teams can quickly understand. The system:

• transcribes the patient’s input

• extracts key symptom information

• structures the data into a clear clinical format

This approach builds on ideas already used in the Accurx ecosystem. Tools like Accurx Scribe show how natural conversations can be converted into structured medical information.

CareLoop applies the same principle across the wider patient journey, capturing updates that occur:

• while waiting for an appointment

• between referrals to specialists

• during recovery after treatment

• during long-term monitoring of chronic conditions

Over time, these updates create a timeline of symptom progression, allowing healthcare teams to understand how a patient’s condition has evolved rather than relying on a single snapshot.

CareLoop can also highlight simple progression signals, indicating whether symptoms appear:

• stable

• improving

• worsening

These signals do not replace clinical judgement. Instead, they give reviewers and administrative teams an early overview of changes in a patient’s condition, helping them identify cases that may require attention sooner.

By keeping patient updates structured and visible, CareLoop strengthens the flow of communication between patients and healthcare teams, ensuring that important information is not lost between interactions.

Step 1 - Patient describes symptoms

Patients speak or type how they feel using natural language.

They can share updates at any point between healthcare touchpoints - for example while waiting for an appointment, after a referral, or during recovery.

Step 2 - Symptoms are structured automatically

CareLoop processes the input and identifies key information such as:

• symptoms

• duration

• severity

• changes since the last update

This transforms everyday patient language into structured clinical information.

Step 3 - Patient reviews the summary

The patient reviews and confirms the structured summary before submitting it.

This ensures that the information being shared with healthcare teams is accurate.

Step 4 - Updates are added to the symptom timeline

Each submission becomes part of the patient’s symptom timeline, creating a clear record of how the condition evolves over time.

Step 5 - Progression signals support reviewers

CareLoop analyses the timeline and highlights whether symptoms appear:

• stable

• improving

• worsening

These signals help reviewers and administrative teams quickly identify meaningful changes in a patient’s condition.

Step 6 - Clinicians see the full picture

When the appointment or consultation occurs, clinicians can review the complete symptom timeline, giving them clearer context about how the patient’s condition has developed.

A patient develops a cold and books a GP appointment scheduled for Friday.

• Monday: the patient records sore throat and mild fever

• Wednesday: they update that the fever has gone but a cough has developed

CareLoop records these updates and builds a clear timeline of symptom changes.

In this case, the system recognises that the condition appears stable or improving, and the appointment proceeds as planned.

When the consultation happens, the clinician can immediately see how the condition evolved during the week. Instead of relying on the patient’s memory, the clinician receives a clear summary of the symptom progression.

This improves communication and allows the consultation to focus on treatment rather than reconstructing events.

In some cases, if symptoms resolve before the appointment, the system could prompt the patient to confirm whether the appointment is still needed. Even a small number of avoided appointments can help free valuable clinical time for patients who need urgent care.

Some patients wait months for specialist appointments.

Examples include:

• chronic abdominal pain

• diabetes management

• mental health support

During these waiting periods, a patient’s condition may remain stable, gradually improve, or in some cases deteriorate significantly.

Without structured updates, these changes often remain invisible to healthcare teams until the next consultation.

CareLoop allows patients to record updates throughout this period, gradually building a detailed timeline of their condition.

As updates are added, the system analyses symptom progression and identifies whether the condition appears stable, improving, or worsening.

If significant deterioration is detected - for example a sudden increase in pain, new symptoms, or concerning changes in a patient’s wellbeing - CareLoop can generate an alert for reviewers or administrative staff.

This does not replace clinical judgement, but it provides early visibility into cases that may otherwise remain unnoticed for weeks or months.

When the specialist appointment finally takes place, the clinician can review the full symptom history rather than relying only on the patient’s recollection.

This helps ensure that consultations begin with a clear understanding of what has actually happened to the patient during the waiting period.

CareLoop improves communication across the healthcare journey by ensuring that patient updates are captured, structured, and visible over time.

Instead of relying on a single snapshot of symptoms, healthcare teams can see how a patient’s condition evolves between appointments, referrals, and follow-ups. This creates a clearer and more reliable flow of information between patients and clinicians.

Even small improvements in communication can have a meaningful impact. When important updates are structured and visible, healthcare teams spend less time chasing information and more time focusing on patient care.

For patients

CareLoop reduces the burden of repeatedly explaining symptoms, and helps patients feel confident that their updates are being captured.

• simple way to record symptom changes using voice or text

• clear timeline of how their condition evolves

• reassurance that important updates are shared with the care team

• less pressure to remember details during consultations

For healthcare staff and reviewers

Administrative teams often act as the first point of contact and manage large volumes of communication. CareLoop helps reduce this pressure by structuring updates automatically.

• structured updates instead of scattered calls or messages

• quick progression signals highlighting meaningful changes in patient condition

• earlier visibility into cases that may require attention

• ability to identify appointments that may no longer be necessary

Even small efficiencies can make a difference. Saving just a few minutes of administrative time per case could translate into hundreds of hours saved across healthcare teams each month.

For clinicians

When clinicians meet a patient, they often have only a limited snapshot of the situation. CareLoop provides clearer context before the consultation begins.

• clearer picture of the patient’s condition before the appointment

• better understanding of how symptoms developed over time

• faster and more focused consultations

For the healthcare system

CareLoop helps strengthen the communication flow across the entire care journey.

• earlier visibility of deteriorating conditions

• improved prioritisation and triage

• potential reduction in unnecessary appointments

• better use of limited clinical capacity

By improving how patient updates are captured and shared, CareLoop supports clearer communication, faster decision-making, and more efficient use of healthcare resources.

One of the biggest challenges during this hackathon was the scale and complexity of healthcare systems.

Healthcare involves many stakeholders, workflows, and communication channels. As we explored the problem space, it quickly became clear that there are many gaps where communication could be improved.

The real challenge was not identifying problems - it was deciding where to focus.

It is easy to become overwhelmed by the ambition of trying to “fix healthcare” as a whole. Instead, we chose to focus on one specific and practical gap: communication between healthcare touchpoints.

This decision allowed us to design a solution that:

• builds on existing tools like Accurx

• fits naturally into current healthcare workflows

• improves communication without adding new complexity

Another challenge was balancing simplicity with usefulness. Healthcare professionals already operate under significant pressure, so any solution must support their work rather than add additional tasks.

For this reason, CareLoop focuses on structuring information that patients are already trying to share, rather than introducing entirely new processes.

CareLoop does not attempt to replace existing systems or solve every challenge in healthcare communication. Instead, it strengthens one critical link in the chain - ensuring that important patient updates are captured, structured, and visible when they matter most.

By improving communication between healthcare touchpoints, CareLoop helps close the loop between patients and clinicians.