Intelligence Helps the NHS Prevent Surgical Complications

NHS Cheshire and Merseyside represents one of England’s largest integrated care systems, serving 2.7 million people across 17 NHS Trusts in the North West. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, elective surgery backlogs became a system-wide constraint — not due to lack of surgical capacity, but because a significant proportion of waiting patients carried elevated clinical risk and were arriving at surgery unprepared, driving avoidable complications, extended stays, and readmissions.

To address this, Sword Intelligence deployed a surgical readiness agentic workflow at St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust as a proof of concept. High-risk patients were identified directly from the waiting list and enrolled in structured, personalized pre-habilitation support before surgery. The approach turned a passive waiting list into an active preparation list.

The program covered a cohort of patients undergoing intermediate-to-major elective surgery across general surgery, orthopaedics, urology, and gynaecology. A matched cohort of eligible patients who chose not to participate served as a control group.

Results demonstrated that pairing individualized risk assessment with targeted pre-habilitation support can meaningfully reduce complications, shorten hospital stays, and cut readmissions — without adding clinical headcount.