80: HealthTech Hour with Steve Roest - Episode 8080: HealthTech Hour with Steve Roest - Episode 80
UK Health Radio Podcast
Steve Roest talks with DrDoctor CEO Tom Whicher about transforming NHS outpatient care through digital tools and AI, and the challenges of innovating in a complex health system. The conversation traces DrDoctor’s journey from early resistance to online data to becoming a widely used platform for patient engagement.
53:09•14 Jul 2026
Rewriting Outpatient Care: DrDoctor, AI and the NHS
Episode Overview
- Outpatient care is heavily focused on routine check-ups, and Tom argues that much of this activity could move to home-based, data-driven models.
- DrDoctor has supported nearly 200 million NHS outpatient appointments for 37 million patients, significantly improving attendance and reducing paper use.
- Early efforts to put patient information online faced strong opposition, but similar ideas now underpin national policy through tools like the NHS app.
- An AI voice agent built on DrDoctor’s platform can authenticate patients, access appointment histories and safely change bookings within existing NHS rules.
- Tom emphasises that meaningful NHS innovation requires curiosity, humility and treating tech suppliers as partners rather than problems to manage.
“Outpatients should not exist.”
What drives someone to seek a life without outdated healthcare processes? This conversation on UK Health Radio’s HealthTech Hour zooms in on just that, through the story of DrDoctor and its co-founder and CEO, Tom Whicher. You’ll hear how Tom went from naval architecture and peeling onions in a factory to reshaping how the NHS handles outpatient appointments.
He recalls his early consultancy days, obsessed with process engineering and efficiency, then being thrown into hospitals and realising, as he puts it, that patients were enduring “a shit customer experience” with missed appointments, paper letters and poor communication. Tom shares the origins of DrDoctor in 2012, when smartphones were still relatively new and the idea of putting patient information online was seen as almost illegal.
He even describes being kicked out of a CIO’s office for suggesting an online portal. Fast-forward to today and DrDoctor has handled nearly 200 million NHS outpatient appointments for 37 million patients, often sitting quietly in the background powering texts, portals and the NHS app. A big theme is his bold statement that “Outpatients should not exist.” Tom argues that routine check-ups should shift to home-based and virtual care, using remote monitoring and patient-initiated follow-ups, freeing hospitals for true interventions.
He also talks about their AI voice agent that lets patients phone up and actually change appointments under complex NHS rules, showing how agentic systems can take real actions rather than just offering dashboards. Along the way, Tom reflects on the challenges of innovation in the NHS, the tension between risk and reward, and the need to treat tech suppliers as genuine partners rather than threats.
He closes with the self-talk that’s carried him through: “Stay curious and stay humble.” If you’re interested in how smarter systems might support both patients and burnt-out clinicians, this episode might spark a few ideas about what healthcare – and future recovery journeys – could look like.
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