AI tools

The Signposting Toolkit has optional AI tools that help you prepare wording and layouts. They support your team’s judgement rather than replace it: AI-drafted card wording and symptom smart visuals go through clinical review, just like your own edits.

Which tools your practice has is decided by the Signposting Toolkit team. You can see them in ☰ Menu›Practice settings›Module access. Using AI to tailor many cards at once during setup is covered in Customise your cards. For how the AI is used safely and what data it sees, see Using AI safely.

You can switch the AI instruction editor and AI suggested questions off or on for individual people. The other tools apply to your whole practice. See Switch AI tools off or on for one person.

Improve a card’s wording

The AI instruction editor rewrites a card’s brief instruction and instructions in short, clear sentences that a receptionist can follow mid-call.

1. Open the symptom and select the round AI button next to Instructions (Suggest improved wording (AI)).

2. The AI Suggestion Preview opens, with the Current version on the left and the AI suggestion (editable, not saved) on the right.

3. Read the suggestion against the current version. Edit the AI brief instruction and the full instruction on the right until they’re right. The AI’s draft is a starting point, not a verdict.

4. Choose what to apply:

   • Apply Brief — the brief instruction only
   • Apply Full — the full instruction only
   • Apply Both — both

   Or select Cancel to leave the card unchanged.

What you apply is exactly what you saw in the preview, including your edits. The card then goes to Pending clinical review. It stays visible to staff while it waits, with the usual pending warning.

The AI is instructed not to change the clinical meaning, escalation routes or urgency wording, and not to add new red flags or options. It may add a few icons from an approved set (for example 💊 for pharmacy) to make steps easier to scan. Your clinical reviewer still checks the result.

Staff who aren’t practice admins can ask for a suggestion if the tool is switched on for them, but they see it read-only, with the note “Admin only — ask a surgery admin to apply changes.”

The previous wording is kept in the card’s history as an audit record, and the history records that the draft came from AI even if you edited it. There is no restore button: to go back, edit the card to the earlier wording, which sends it back for review.

Smart visuals for symptoms

A smart visual reorganises a card’s instructions into a layout staff can read at a glance while the patient waits:

• Red flags in a dedicated block, with the single action to take if any apply.
• Routing — the “if X, book Y” decisions as rows, each with an urgency chip (Emergency, Same day, Urgent or Routine) taken from the card’s own wording.
• The card’s Important Notice, shown first.
• Key facts, checklists, steps, grouped bullets and small tables for the supporting detail.

999, 111 and local phone numbers are emphasised and can be tapped. Your practice’s highlight rules apply inside the visual exactly as in the standard instructions.

Generate and save a smart visual

1. Open the symptom and select Generate smart visual. Nothing is saved yet.
2. Check the preview against the instructions. Use the arrows to move sections up or down, or remove a section.
3. To steer a new version, type a short instruction under Guidance for the AI (for example “make the routing options clearer”) and select Regenerate with guidance.
4. Select Save visual, or Discard to throw it away.

Once the card is approved, it opens on the smart visual for everyone. Staff can switch to the written instructions with the Standard tab.

Things to know:

• The written instructions are the source of truth. Generating a visual never changes them. If someone edits the instructions afterwards, the visual is hidden from staff until an admin selects Regenerate smart visual.
• Each age-group variant has its own visual. Switching age group shows that variant’s visual, or the standard instructions if it doesn’t have one. Generate one for each variant you want covered.
• To take a visual away, select Remove visual and confirm. Removing one doesn’t send the card for review.

What staff see is described in Smart visuals and suggested questions. What reviewers check is in AI drafts and smart visuals.

Smart visuals for handbook pages

Practice Handbook pages can have a smart visual too: an infographic-style view built from summaries, warnings, numbered steps, checklists, contact cards, buddy pairs, team cards with working-day chips, role cards and key-fact tiles. The AI groups and reorganises the page (for example, grouping rows by team) rather than copying its layout.

Anyone who can edit a handbook page can make one:

1. Open the page and select Generate smart visual.
2. Check the preview. Reorder or remove sections, or add Guidance for the AI (for example “group by site”) and regenerate.
3. Select Save visual or Discard.

Handbook content is operational (rotas, contacts, procedures) rather than clinical, so a saved visual is shown to staff straight away. It doesn’t go through Clinical Review; the handbook’s audit trail records who saved or removed it. Check it carefully before saving.

As with symptoms, the page text is the source of truth. If the page is edited after the visual was made, the visual is hidden until someone regenerates it. Print visual prints the visual, and Remove visual takes it away. Saved visuals stay visible even if the tool is later switched off for your practice, until someone removes them. See Practice Handbook.

AI suggested questions

Get Questions to Ask on a symptom page gives staff patient-friendly questions to help them gather what they need to follow the card. They appear in a panel headed Suggested wording for questions to ask, with Copy all questions.

The questions are grouped by purpose, typically:

1. checking for emergencies or red flags (only where the card mentions them)
2. assessing urgency or timing
3. working out the right care pathway

A group is left out if the card doesn’t cover it.

The AI reads only that card’s brief instruction and instructions, not your practice profile. If your team doesn’t find the questions helpful, you can switch the tool off for everyone or for particular people in Module access.

Draft a workflow

Draft it with AI, in Create workflow… on Manage workflows, turns a description of how your team handles a kind of document, or your existing written instructions, into a new workflow’s steps. It opens as a draft, laid out for you, with a reminder to check it. Check every step, answer and outcome before you publish it.

The AI works only from what you give it, and leaves an answer leading nowhere where your description doesn’t say what happens next, so the workflow’s checks point it out. Don’t include patient details in the description. See Draft a workflow with AI.

Refine a workflow

Refine with AI, in the toolbar while you’re editing a workflow, changes it the way you describe, such as putting a group of steps in their own labelled section or making the layout more compact. AI keeps everything you don’t ask it to change. You see its version, with each new, changed and moved step marked, and nothing changes until you choose Apply changes. Straight afterwards, Undo AI change puts the workflow back as it was.

AI is sent the workflow’s steps, answers, sections and reference cards with your request, but not its layout. Don’t include patient details in the request. See Refine a workflow with AI.

What AI can and can’t do

AI can:

• make wording clearer and more consistent
• suggest questions to ask
• lay out existing content so it is quicker to read
• draft a workflow’s steps from your description, and change a workflow the way you describe, for you to check

AI can’t:

• approve anything. Card wording and symptom smart visuals need clinical approval; handbook visuals need an editor to check and save them; workflow drafts and refinements need a practice admin to apply and publish them.
• make clinical decisions or replace your clinical reviewer’s judgement
• skip the review workflow
• see patient records. Don’t type patient details into guidance boxes.

Troubleshooting

The AI added a step that wasn’t in the original

Don’t assume an added step is right because AI produced it. Check it against the original instructions and your practice’s agreed arrangements. Edit it out in the preview before applying, or, if it’s already applied, edit the card or ask your reviewer to request changes. Requesting changes doesn’t restore the old wording or hide the card. If the card needs taking out of use meanwhile, disable it separately.

Appointment names in the result don’t match ours

The instruction editor and smart visuals reuse the wording already in the card, so fix the names in the card itself. For cards tailored during setup, check your appointment names in the practice questionnaire. See Customise your cards.

The AI button or Get Questions to Ask doesn’t appear

Check Module access: the tool may be Off for your practice, or switched off for that person. Smart visual buttons appear only for practice admins (symptoms) or people who can edit the page (handbook), and only when your practice has the tool.

The button appears, but using it gives an access error

This usually affects people who work at more than one practice. The AI tools check the person’s default practice. See Staff who work at more than one practice.

Staff can’t see the smart visual

Either the card is still awaiting clinical approval, or the instructions were edited after the visual was made. Open the card as an admin: a message says which. Approve the card, or select Regenerate smart visual and save again.

The generated visual failed or looks wrong

Select Regenerate smart visual, with guidance if it helps. The AI can only use a fixed set of section types, colours and icons, and anything that doesn’t fit is rejected before you see it. If a visual still isn’t right, don’t save it: the written instructions work on their own.

Related: Using AI safely · AI drafts and smart visuals · Cards