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Healthcare London UK NLP Clinical Trials

10x Faster Patient Record Processing for a UK Healthtech

A UK healthtech company needed to process thousands of unstructured patient records for clinical trial matching. We built an NLP system that extracts medical entities, maps them to standardised ontologies, and matches patients to eligible trials automatically.

10x
Faster matching
92%
Accuracy
NHS
Compliant
10x Speed Improvement
Patient Records
Entity Extraction
Ontology Mapping
Trial Matching

Thousands of patient records, zero automation

  • Thousands of unstructured clinical notes in varying formats including GP letters, discharge summaries, and lab reports
  • Manual matching taking the clinical team 2+ hours per patient, creating an unsustainable bottleneck
  • Inconsistent medical terminology and coding conventions across NHS trusts
  • Strict NHS data governance and Information Governance (IG) requirements adding complexity to any technical solution
  • A growing backlog of unprocessed records delaying patient access to potentially life-saving clinical trials

“We were watching patients miss their trial windows simply because we couldn’t process records fast enough. Every day of delay was a day a patient might lose access to a treatment that could change their outcome.”

— Clinical Operations Lead, UK Healthtech Company

From unstructured notes to intelligent trial matching

Clinical Data Assessment

Mapped document types and data flows across 3 NHS trust partners. Identified 200+ medical entities critical for trial eligibility, catalogued format variations, and established a ground-truth annotation dataset with clinical domain experts.

Medical NLP Pipeline

Built a custom biomedical Named Entity Recognition (NER) model trained on UK clinical text, including GP correspondence and NHS discharge summaries. Mapped all extractions to SNOMED CT and ICD-10 ontologies for standardised, interoperable patient profiles.

Trial Matching Engine

Developed a semantic matching algorithm that compares structured patient profiles against trial eligibility criteria in real time. Each match is accompanied by a confidence score, enabling clinicians to prioritise high-probability candidates while reviewing borderline cases.

NHS-Compliant Deployment

Deployed within NHS-approved cloud infrastructure with full IG Toolkit compliance. Implemented role-based access controls, end-to-end audit logging, and data residency guarantees to meet the highest standards of patient data protection.

System design overview

Data Sources
GP Letters
Discharge Notes
Lab Reports
↓ ↓ ↓
NLP Engine
Document Parser
Medical NER
Ontology Mapper
↓ ↓ ↓
Intelligence
Patient Profiler
Trial Matcher
Confidence Scorer
↓ ↓ ↓
Output
Match Dashboard
Clinician Review
Trial Enrollment API

Measurable impact from day one

10x
Faster patient-trial matching
Compared to manual process
92%
Match accuracy
Validated against clinical review
12 min
Average per patient
Down from 2+ hours
NHS IG
Toolkit compliant
Full data governance

Built with best-in-class tools

Python
spaCy
BioBERT
SNOMED CT
FastAPI
PostgreSQL
NHS Cloud (Azure UK South)
Docker

8 weeks from kickoff to production

Week 1–2
Clinical Data Assessment & Entity Mapping
Mapped document types across 3 NHS trusts, defined 200+ target medical entities, and built the annotation dataset with clinical experts.
Week 3–5
NLP Model Training & Ontology Integration
Trained biomedical NER model on UK clinical text, integrated SNOMED CT and ICD-10 ontology mapping, and validated extraction accuracy with clinicians.
Week 5–7
Trial Matching Engine & Dashboard
Built the semantic matching algorithm, confidence scoring system, and clinician-facing dashboard for reviewing and approving match recommendations.
Week 7–8
NHS IG Compliance & Production Deployment
Completed IG Toolkit assessment, deployed to NHS-approved Azure UK South infrastructure, and conducted UAT with clinical operations team.
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