10th December 2025

AI speeds up Autism and ADHD assessments, report finds

AI tools could slash waiting times for thousands of people awaiting an Autism or ADHD assessment in England, according to a new report.

The report highlights a pilot with Your Healthcare CIC, a social enterprise that delivers health and social care community services in Kingston Upon Thames, with learning disability, autism and ADHD services also delivered in Richmond Upon Thames. Clinicians in these services used an AI note-taking tool called Magic Notes, which uses generative AI to record and summarise service-user appointments. By using the tool, the most significant time savings were observed in the drafting of ADHD and autism reports for the individuals who agreed to take part in the pilot, where there was a potential 63% reduction in time spent writing assessments.

One of the benefits of AI is its ability to more accurately capture conversations compared to manual note-taking. After using the tool over an eight-week period, clinicians reported a 62% improvement in the quality and level of detail of written records. These records can be combined with existing documents, audio, video, and even handwritten notes to generate custom reports, which can be edited for accuracy or completion.

The report also found that Magic Notes was able to improve the quality of conversations with service-users by 44%. Without the distraction of note-taking, clinicians were able to fully focus on the conversation taking place in the room. This is particularly important for Autism and ADHD assessments, where clinicians need to assess a person’s non-verbal cues, ask questions, and make a professional diagnosis or judgement. Crucially, Magic Notes does not make a diagnosis. The tool is engineered with guardrails to prevent this.

As waiting lists for neurodevelopmental assessments increase rapidly, Your Healthcare welcomes the opportunities offered by AI-driven solutions to tackle the long waiting times for people needing support. As of June 2025, there were 236,225 people waiting for an autism assessment in England, with 89% waiting longer than the recommended 13 weeks. Similarly, NHS data from May 2025 estimates as many as 549,000 people could be waiting for an ADHD assessment.

The NHS 10 Year Plan outlines the role that digital technology must play in easing administrative burden and freeing up staff member’s time for service-user care. 65% of clinicians involved in the pilot study at Your Healthcare stated that the amount of clinical admin work negatively affected their wellbeing. This dropped to just 19% after the tool was introduced.

Dr Karen Long, Consultant Clinical Psychologist and frontline service lead at Your Healthcare, said: “Since rolling out Magic Notes, we’ve seen a huge improvement in the quality of case notes, along with the consistency of documentation and reports. It’s also allowed our clinicians to conduct more assessments and spend more time with service users, as their admin has been significantly reduced. It’s encouraging to see that 86% of our staff want to continue using Magic Notes after the pilot, which illustrates the difference it’s making to their practice.”

Dr Julian Morris Consultant Clinical Psychologist and head of service -NDS Psychology, Adult Autism and ADHD added: “The time-saving element of Magic Notes has been valuable and I now plan my work much more effectively as I have a clearer idea how long it will take to write up a report. Being entirely dependent on keeping a record of each client session can mean interrupting the flow to make sure things are recorded – using Magic Notes means sessions can flow more easily as the note taking is taken care of.”

Rachel Astall, chief customer officer at Beam, said: “Healthcare professionals play such a vital role in the community, but their jobs are being taken over by enormous amounts of admin. We’re building tech tools that allow them to spend more time with service users, less time on admin and achieve better work-life balance making it a much more enjoyable career. As the first healthcare provider to pilot Magic Notes, Your Healthcare is paving the way for greater innovation within the sector.”

The eight week pilot of Magic Notes took place from April to June 2025 and involved 28 clinicians across the Neurodevelopmental and School Health Teams at Your Healthcare, who made a total of 442 recordings. Following the successful pilot, Your Healthcare is now exploring how Magic Notes can be used by additional services across the organisation.

Magic Notes complies with UK data protection laws, and maintains robust security practices, including:

• Data protection impact assessments (DPIAs) are conducted for all data processing activities, ensuring impact on privacy is assessed.
• Security certifications include ISO27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus
• All data is encrypted at rest and in transit.
• All data is stored in the UK. All data is processed in the UK and EU.
• Data is automatically deleted in line with customers’ data retention policies.
• Systems are in place to monitor for data breaches, and processes are in places to report any incidents.

Regular security assessments and penetration tests are carried out.