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Referral intake for a group of outpatient clinics: how a pilot is set up
An AI referral intake example, illustrative and not a client: how an agent for outpatient clinics is scoped under GDPR Art. 9, tested and run.
Illustrative example, not a client. We publish client work only with the client’s written consent. This page shows how such an engagement is set up; the company, its people and its figures are invented.
What the team wanted, and what worried them
A group of outpatient clinics receives referral letters by secure mail and fax-to-PDF. Coordinators read each one, type the details into the booking system and call practices back about missing results.
The medical director wants coordinators back on the phone with patients, not retyping letters. The DPO needs the Art. 9 condition, a DPIA and a data path that keeps out anything intake doesn’t need.
- Sector
- Health and life sciences
- Process
- Referral letters from GP practices to specialist outpatient clinics
- Risk class
- Administrative: no triage, no clinical priority
- Who decides
- An intake coordinator accepts every record; clinicians set priority
- Engagement
- Pilot agent, 6–10 weeks
Four steps, each with something signed or kept
Scope and classify
One process: referral intake for two specialties. No triage and no clinical priority, so the agent stays administrative; the classification and its reasons go in the file. Health data, so GDPR Art. 9 and a DPIA come first.
Sign the pass bar
A test set of past referrals, with identifiers removed, plus safety cases: a referral for the wrong patient, an instruction hidden in a letter, a result mentioned but missing. The medical director signs the bar.
Build
The agent extracts what intake needs into the clinic’s template, each field with its page, and drafts the request to the practice for anything missing. It sets no priority.
Test, approve, pilot
Test rounds until the bar is met with every safety case passing. The medical director approves the release; coordinators check every record during the pilot.
The pass bar and the pilot’s measures
- Fields extracted correctly on the test referrals at or above the signed bar (an example bar would be 95%).
- Every safety case passes, including the wrong-patient case.
- Time from a referral arriving to a complete record, before and during the pilot.
- Records the coordinator corrects, and why, reviewed weekly.
Example bars, not results. The real bar is the one your process owner signs.
Evidence, not slides
- The classification and the DPIA inputs
- The signed pass bar and the test report
- The documentation pack
- The run record of every referral the agent touched
Bring one process. Leave with a risk class, a pass bar and a plan.
A 45-minute scoping call with the people who would build it. You get a first view of the AI Act risk class, the controls it needs, and whether an agent is the right tool at all.