Governance and benefits

Responsible use of agentic AI in performance management — clear benefits, hard controls, and a practical assurance checklist before anything reaches services or Board.

Demonstration caveat: This is a personal demonstration site using synthetic data. It is not an official Dorset HealthCare report and does not contain confidential or patient-identifiable information.

Benefits

  • Faster first drafts of reports and briefing notes — humans edit rather than start from blank
  • More consistent report structure across services and shared targets
  • Reusable subject matter rules for MHSDS, CSDS, QA and IG — captured once, version controlled
  • Clearer caveats and data quality warnings — harder to accidentally omit
  • Better translation from analysis to action — draft narratives tested against operational questions
  • Better onboarding for analysts and performance managers joining complex portfolios
  • Improved assurance before reports go to services or Board
  • Reduced single-person dependency on tacit knowledge held by one individual
  • More time for human judgement, stakeholder engagement and improvement work

Controls

  • No patient-identifiable data in AI workflows without explicit IG approval
  • Synthetic data for demonstration — this site uses fabricated aggregates only
  • Human approval before use — named owner sign-off on every output
  • Source-linked definitions — metrics traceable to authoritative guidance
  • Version-controlled prompts and rules — auditable change history
  • Audit log of agent outputs — what was asked, what was produced, who reviewed
  • Clear confidence levels — confirmed, likely, conditional, needs owner confirmation
  • Report QA checklist — mandatory before distribution
  • Escalation where data quality affects interpretation — do not quietly publish uncertain figures

AI assurance checklist

Before any AI-assisted performance output is shared with services, directors or Board, a human owner should confirm:

Done Check
Remember: If any answer raises doubt, pause distribution, escalate to the Information Lead or Caldicott guardian as appropriate, and resolve before sign-off. The IG/Safety Agent in the operating model exists to enforce this boundary.