“Lifting the Mental Load” — How a Leading Mental Health Clinic in Edinburgh Is Using AI to Redefine Clinical Care
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Background: A practice built on care and innovation
Located in the heart of Edinburgh, The Edinburgh Practice has grown into one of Scotland’s leading independent mental health services, offering psychiatry, psychology and neurodiversity assessments with a team of nearly 50 clinicians.
Under Hazel Monteith, Head of Growth & Operations the practice has embraced technology to improve both efficiency and quality of care. From embracing leading PMS Semble to becoming fully paper-free, every new system is chosen to reduce administrative burden and enhance the patient experience.
“We wanted to make our processes more efficient while keeping the highest clinical standards,” Hazel explains. “Every change we make should help clinicians spend more time focusing on their clients, not paperwork.”
The Challenge: Administrative overload and compliance pressure
Before modernising its workflows, the practice relied heavily on manual processes. Many clinicians still wrote notes by hand, which had to be scanned and uploaded to patient records. Even those typing digitally often spent hours each evening catching up on notes.
“When I started, around 60% of our clinicians were handwriting notes,” Hazel recalls. “We’ve completely moved away from that now, but it showed us how much time was being lost to admin.”
Many clinicians work in the NHS as well as privately and any extra administrative work cuts directly into their day — limiting appointment availability and overall productivity. And as a Health Improvement Scotland–regulated service, every patient record must meet detailed compliance standards.
“There are varying degrees of note-taking,” says Hazel. “We wanted to support our clinicians to produce accurate, comprehensive notes while ensuring we meet our regulation requirements.”
The Solution: Introducing Heidi & Semble
To reduce admin time while maintaining quality and compliance, The Edinburgh Practice introduced Heidi to transcribe consultations and draft GP letters, ADHD, ASD and other assessments.
Heidi’s introduction was part of a wider push toward efficiency — benefitting from the integration with Semble to create a fully paper-free, integrated workflow.
Hazel explains,
“Our psychiatrists’ time is precious. One of our child psychiatrists told me admin was the bane of his life — now he’s increased his clinic time because he’s using Heidi and loves it.”
The benefits were immediate:
Consistent, compliant documentation ready for inspection.
Reduced administrative workload across clinicians.
Better patient interactions, as clinicians can stay fully present in sessions.
The Edinburgh Practice has consistently maintained a weekly adoption rate of over 90% — almost all clinicians with a Heidi account are using it week in, week out.
Clinician perspectives: Time saved, focus regained
Clinical Psychologist Dr Valerie Savoie shares:
“Using Heidi during my sessions has enabled me to focus 100% on the client. Reviewing the transcript takes only a few minutes, and the accuracy is excellent — better than if I’d written it myself. On a day of six sessions, Heidi saves me between one and two hours of note-typing.”
Child & Adolescent Consultant Psychiatrist Dr Johnny Graham adds:
“I was sceptical at first, but it’s a revolution — so easy to use and incredibly accurate. It’s saved me loads of time and even helped organise my occasionally disorganised thoughts.”
Dr Graham has since increased his client-facing clinic time by two hours per week thanks to the time saved with Heidi.
The Impact: More patients, better notes, happier clinicians
25–30% less admin time across clinicians using Heidi.
Increased patient throughput and revenue, as clinicians add extra sessions each week.
Improved compliance with Health Improvement Scotland standards.
Greater clinician wellbeing, with less after-hours work and more focus in sessions.
Hazel summarises the change:
“It’s made a tangible difference. Our clinicians are producing higher-quality notes and seeing more clients — without feeling rushed or overwhelmed.”
Looking ahead: Towards an AI care partner
With the practice near fully digital, Hazel says tools like Heidi and Semble are helping to bring every part of the clinical journey into one place.
The Edinburgh Practice is now expanding its use of Heidi beyond transcription — integrating multi-step assessments, questionnaires, and report generation into a single intelligent workflow.
