Calling your local health centre in the Valencian Community could change significantly over the coming years. The Regional Ministry of Health has published a tender to implement a telephone care platform using intelligent virtual assistants. This system, based on artificial intelligence, will answer Primary Care calls, identify the reason for the consultation and help guide each request to the most appropriate professional or service.
The contract features a base tender budget of 18.7 million euro including VAT. It forms part of the Digital Health Strategy of the Valencian Community and aims to improve public accessibility to the healthcare system. Health authorities maintain that the tool will reinforce the response capacity of Primary Care, improve the allocation of resources and reduce the problems stemming from a high volume of calls.
According to data provided by the Ministry, around 60 per cent of calls made to Primary Care currently go unanswered due to service saturation. At peak times, that figure can reach 90 per cent. Furthermore, the average delay to manage these requests stands at 7.08 days, a situation that impacts patient satisfaction and the organisation of healthcare professionals.
Patients will continue to dial their usual number for appointment bookings at each health centre. They will call exactly as they do now, but they will be answered by a virtual assistant. This assistant will verify their identity using their SIP health card number and ask a series of questions to identify symptoms and reasons for the consultation.
Based on this information, the system will be able to book an appointment with the most appropriate professional for each case, whether that is a family doctor, nurse, midwife, social worker or administrative staff. The platform will also allow users to modify or cancel already assigned appointments. Conversations will take place using natural language and will have an average duration of under three minutes.
The rollout will be progressive, eventually reaching 846 Primary Care health centres and auxiliary clinics dependent on the Regional Ministry of Health. Once implemented across all centres, the system could handle up to 21 million calls a year.
The platform will also integrate with digital channels such as the GVA+Salut App and the patient portal. This ensures that demand management can be carried out from different access points in a common, traceable and uniform manner for all centres.
The Ministry requires the solution to hold certification as a medical device in compliance with European MDR class IIb regulations, as it is a tool that automates clinical conversations with patients and can intervene in classification, guidance and follow-up processes. It must also comply with regulations regarding data protection, cybersecurity, interoperability and the responsible use of artificial intelligence.
Additionally, the system will incorporate dashboards to track activity, evaluate service quality, monitor platform performance and provide useful information to progressively improve the care model. The Ministry considers this tender a decisive step in the digital transformation of the Valencian public health system and in the modernisation of demand management within Primary Care.
