Clinician First: Learnings from First Month of the Clinical AI Fellowship

A fellowship built around real-world clinical impact 

One month ago, Dr Jack Evans and Dr Dhiren Shivji joined T-Pro as our first Clinical AI Fellows, working alongside our CCIO and CSO, Ben Jeeves, with a clear aim: to bring frontline clinical experience into the way clinical AI is designed, tested, validated, and implemented in real healthcare settings.

At T-Pro, this reflects a core belief: the future of clinical AI must be built with clinicians, not simply for them. The Fellowship was created to make that belief practical by embedding clinical voices early in the process, helping shape technology that is safe, meaningful, and built around real-world workflows.

One month in, one insight already stands out:

“The gap isn’t technical. It’s translational.”

— Dr Dhiren Shivji, NHS Clinician and T-Pro Clinical AI Fellow

That is the gap the Fellowship is designed to close.

Inside Month One of the Clinical AI Fellowship

The Fellowship was created to ensure that clinical voices are not added at the end of the process, but embedded from the beginning, helping shape technology that is safe, meaningful, and built around real-world clinical workflows.

For Dr Jack Evans, the first month has felt both energising and formative:

“Joining T-Pro as a Clinical AI Fellow has been an energising experience from the very beginning. The role is new, not only to the company but to the wider landscape of clinical AI, and that has made these first few weeks feel both exciting and formative.”

That sense of stepping into something new has been matched by a strong impression of how T-Pro works internally. Jack described an environment where collaboration is not confined by job titles or departments:

“I have been genuinely impressed by how flat, open, and collaborative the organisation feels. There is a real absence of silos. People are willing to help, explain, challenge, and contribute, even when something does not sit neatly within their own area of responsibility.”

For Dr Dhiren Shivji, the Fellowship has created a direct bridge between two very different but deeply connected worlds: frontline clinical practice and health technology development.

“Monday/Tuesday: in clinic with complex FND patients, working alongside neurology and neuropsychiatry colleagues. Thursday/Friday: at T-Pro, thinking about AI, product, and how this actually lands in real clinical practice. That contrast has been the biggest shift and honestly, the most valuable one.”

His reflection captures the core purpose of the Fellowship: to bring clinical reality closer to the way AI products are designed, tested, and implemented. In the first month, that has meant creating space for clinicians to contribute not as external reviewers, but as active partners in how we think about safety, workflow, and real-world impact.

“What’s stood out most is the culture. Open, collaborative, and you can speak up, which matters enormously in a space where safety and uncertainty are part of the work.”

This is where the Clinician First approach becomes tangible. It is not only about having clinicians in the room. It is about building the kind of environment where their lived experience can shape decisions early, openly, and continuously.

Three Key Learnings From Our Fellows: 

1. Clinician First only works when clinicians are embedded, not consulted

The first month has reinforced that meaningful clinical input cannot sit at the edge of product development. It has to be part of the work from the beginning.

The value of the Fellowship is not simply that clinicians can review what has already been built. It is that they can help shape the questions being asked before decisions are made:

- How will this work in practice?

- Where could risk emerge?

- What would make this usable for a busy clinician?

- What might be missed if we only look at the product from a technical perspective?

This is where the Clinician First approach becomes practical. It moves clinical involvement upstream, into discovery, design, validation, workflow thinking, and implementation. That changes the quality of the conversation. It helps teams build with a clearer understanding of real clinical environments, rather than relying on assumptions about them.

As Ben Jeeves, CCIO and CSO at T-Pro reflected:

“You cannot underestimate the value of having the right clinicians embedded within a tech company. A clinician’s input doesn’t just improve what you’re building, it directly shapes how you think, and it accelerates everything.”

The impact is already visible. Clinical insight is helping connect product ambition with practical delivery, ensuring that innovation is not only technically strong, but clinically relevant, safe, and usable.

2. Safety has to be designed into the process, not checked at the end

Clinical safety is not a single stage in the product lifecycle. It is a discipline that needs to run through every stage of development.

In AI, especially in ambient and clinical documentation technology, risk can appear in subtle ways: in workflow fit, in how information is captured, in how outputs are interpreted, in how clinicians build trust, and in how systems behave under real-world pressure. These are not issues that can be fully understood through theory alone.

The Fellowship is helping bring clinical safety closer to day-to-day product decisions. By involving clinicians directly in validation and implementation discussions, teams can better understand where confidence is being built, where processes need strengthening, and where the product needs to behave differently in real clinical settings.

This shifts safety from being a final approval moment to becoming a continuous feedback loop. It means safety is considered not only when something is ready to launch, but while it is being shaped.

For T-Pro, this is a critical part of building AI that healthcare teams can trust.

3. The real opportunity is closing the translation gap

The first month has also made clear that the hardest challenge is not simply building advanced technology. It is translating that technology into clinical practice in a way that genuinely works.

That translation gap sits between what a product can do and how it performs in the reality of care delivery. It includes the pressure of clinics, the complexity of patient interactions, the variability of workflows, the expectations of clinicians, and the need for patients to feel supported rather than disrupted by technology.

This is where embedded clinical voices create measurable value. They help product and AI teams understand not only whether something works, but whether it works in context.

For T-Pro, this means asking deeper questions:

• Does the solution reduce burden or create new friction?

• Does it support the clinician’s thinking?

• Does it fit naturally into the consultation?

• Does it strengthen the patient experience?

• Can it scale without losing clinical meaning?

The Fellowship is already helping T-Pro answer these questions with more clarity. It is turning clinical experience into product intelligence, and that is where the long-term impact lies.

Why this matters for T-Pro and for healthcare

The pace of change in ambient voice technology and clinical AI is accelerating. As Ben reflected, this first month has unfolded against a wider health tech landscape where change is constant.

“Time has moved incredibly quickly, but what stands out to me even more is just how much has been achieved in that short space. That pace of progress really reflects the wider health tech landscape right now, particularly in ambient voice technology where it’s fair to say change isn’t gradual, it’s constant and accelerating.”
— Ben Jeeves

But adoption will depend on trust. Trust will depend on safety, usability, workflow fit, and clinical relevance.

That is why the Clinician First approach matters. The first month has shown the impact of that approach already.

Ben described the immediate contribution of Jack and Dhiren:

“What’s been most striking is the immediate impact Jack and Dhiren have had. It already feels like they’ve always been part of the team, which is usually a clear signal that you’ve got the right people.”

He added:

“They’ve settled in seamlessly, brought incredibly valuable clinical perspectives into conversations, and helped bridge the gap between product and real-world use in a way that’s hard to manufacture without lived experience.”

This is the value of embedding clinicians into a health technology company. They do more than review outputs. They shape the questions being asked. They bring context, judgement, risk awareness, empathy, and an understanding of how care is actually delivered.

Looking Ahead

One month is only the beginning.

There is still a lot to learn, test, build, and refine. But the direction is clear: clinical AI will be most impactful when clinicians are not simply consulted at the end, but involved throughout.