Reducing waiting times for appointments and operations is a key priority for the NHS.

The University of Essex is working with the East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust to use AI to come up with the solution.

The complexity involved in running NHS health trusts means the amount of data which is used to measure performances of different departments is vast and therefore requires world-class analytics to help them run as efficiently as possible.

Using both AI and data analytics, the team are revolutionising the way patient appointments and surgeries are scheduled.

A new model has been created by the School of Computer Science's Dr Faiyaz Doctor, Dr Michael Kampouridis and Professor Xinan Yang, using machine learning which can account for regular scheduling issues such as underrunning or overrunning appointments.

It is hoped the system will save hundreds of thousands of pounds each year and ensure hundreds more people can be seen at the Essex and Suffolk Elective Orthopaedic Centre.

Head of analytics at ESNEFT Dr Hugo Herrera hopes the partnership will ultimately improve the performance of clinical staff across the trust which will help to benefit patients.

He said: “Like all NHS organisations we have huge amounts of data with a broad utility that, when combined with novel analytical techniques, can provide new insights on how we can improve our approach to planning or delivery of care.

“Through this partnership we will bring together data analysts in the NHS and academia to deliver better outputs from our data for our clinical colleagues.”