Last updated: July 2026

I have been a doctor for twenty-six years and a Consultant Urologist at Kettering General Hospital since 2022. But the problem I am about to describe started long before Kettering. Writing clinic letters was something I accepted the way you accept weather. It happened after every clinic. It took however long it took. You got on with it.

A few years ago I stopped accepting it. Not because I had a technological epiphany. Because I sat down one Thursday evening with a stack of fourteen letters still to dictate, realised I had been doing this exact thing every week for over two decades, and thought: this cannot be the best we can do.

What followed was a conversation with my cousin Sherif — a software developer — that turned into a product. That product is called Docyment. This is the story of why it exists, what it does, and what it does not do.

What Problem Does a Consultant Urologist Have with Clinic Letters?

Every time a UK consultant sees a patient in clinic, a formal clinical letter must be produced. Not a note in a file. A letter addressed to the patient's GP, structured with the right headings — history, examination, investigations, clinical impression, management plan, follow-up — in the right tone, with the right detail. It is a medicolegal document that may be read by an insurer, a solicitor, or another consultant years from now.

There is a version of this story where a founder says "clinical documentation is broken" and gestures broadly at the state of healthcare administration. That is not this story.

My problem was narrow and concrete. I see twelve to fifteen patients in a Friday afternoon urology clinic. Each one leaves a clinical document to prepare after the patient-facing work is finished.

Multiply that across a week of clinics — NHS and private — and the number climbs to forty, fifty, sometimes sixty letters. This is not an inconvenience. It is a second job.

When I deferred a letter to the evening, I found myself reconstructing the consultation from notes. I would check the PSA value, the MRI finding and the follow-up interval again. This is what I call documentation debt.

The clinical content degrades. The time expands. The evening disappears.

Why Did Existing Tools Not Solve the Clinic Letter Problem?

Before building anything, I tried dictation and transcription workflows. What I wanted was a process that fitted the letters I wrote and the way I worked.

Dragon Medical dictation. I used Dragon for years. In my workflow, speech-to-text still left the work of structuring, formatting and reviewing the letter.

Outsourced dictation services. I tried sending audio files to a transcription service. Waiting for the draft and checking its terminology and format were still part of my workflow.

AI documentation tools. Capturing a consultation and drafting a document is another approach. The fit depends on the product's supported formats and the clinician's review workflow.

My output is a structured letter to a named GP, with specific sections in a specific order. The format and review process mattered to me as much as the initial capture.

Recording a consultation can suit some workflows; providing your own findings can suit others. Check the current capabilities of each product. See AI medical letters UK: what consultants need to know.

An AI-generated document can contain errors or omissions. The clinician needs to compare it with the source and approve it before use.

I am not criticising these tools. They solve a real problem for the right user. They just did not solve my problem.

How Did Docyment Start?

The decision to build came from a single question. I described the workflow I wanted to my cousin Sherif: I see a patient, I capture the key clinical findings, and something produces the finished letter — addressed, formatted, structured — for me to review. A letter I can review and send.

Sherif asked me: "Can you describe the letter format precisely enough that a machine could write it?"

The answer was yes. UK consultant clinic letters follow a predictable structure. The headings are consistent. The tone is consistent. The level of detail expected by a GP is consistent. What varies is the clinical content — the findings, the results, the plan. If I could give the system the clinical content and the template, the system could produce the letter.

The first version was rough. It worked for urology outpatient letters only. The template was rigid. The output needed heavy editing. But the core insight held: if you separate the clinical content from the letter structure, and you have a system that understands both, you can generate a finished letter from a handful of clinical inputs.

We iterated. We added more templates — post-operative, follow-up, new patient, insurer reports. We added Sherif Darwish, a Consultant Psychiatrist in Leicester, who brought a completely different letter format and validated that the approach worked across specialties.

What Does Docyment Actually Do?

Docyment is now a connected clinic platform with booking, patient records, patient communication and AI clinical documents. Its document workflow offers Dictate, Record, Write and Scan. An AI reviewer checks each draft, and a clinician reviews and approves it.

The workflow today is this. You open Docyment, select a patient, and choose a template. I have templates for urology outpatient, post-operative follow-up, LUTS assessment, haematuria investigation — each one structured the way I actually write those letters.

Then you give it the clinical content. You have four ways to do this:

Dictate — you speak your findings directly into the app. Not a full letter dictation. Just the clinical content. "PSA 8.2, up from 4.1 last year. MRI shows PI-RADS 4 lesion right peripheral zone. Discussed findings and recommended template biopsy. Patient consents. Listed."

Record — capture the consultation with the patient's consent, then use the transcript to prepare a draft in your template.

Write — type the clinical findings. Bullet points are enough to begin a draft. This is what I use most often in my own practice.

Scan — you photograph your handwritten clinic notes and upload them. Docyment reads the handwriting, extracts the clinical content, and generates the letter.

You start document generation and receive a draft in the selected template, with the headings and recipient details for you to check. Clinical documents are currently produced in English.

Every letter is reviewed by the clinician before it goes anywhere. You are always the author of record. The AI assists with the formatting and structure; the clinical judgement is yours.

What Does Docyment Not Do?

I want to be direct about the limitations, because clinicians can spot a sales pitch from across a room.

Integrations need a separate discussion. Do not assume Docyment writes into your EPR. You can begin alongside your current system and use your clinical templates.

No clinical judgement replacement. The clinician supplies and checks the findings and decisions. AI drafting assists clinical judgement, and the draft can contain mistakes.

Your choice of capture. Dictate, Record, Write or Scan. If you record the consultation, tell the patient and obtain their consent.

No AI training on patient data. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. We do not use patient data to train AI models, and our AI providers' API terms exclude it from training by default. Read our security and data protection page for processing details.

Why Does a Clinician-Founder Build Differently?

There is a difference between a product built by someone who researched the problem and a product built by someone who lives it every Friday afternoon. A clinician-founder knows the clinical workflow from the inside — not from user research sessions, but from twenty-six years of writing the letters.

I know what a urology follow-up letter looks like because I have written thousands of them. I know that the GP wants the PSA trend, not just the latest value. I know that "plan: continue watchful waiting" is meaningless without specifying the interval and the trigger for escalation. I know that an insurer letter has different headings from an NHS letter, and that a post-operative letter to a GP needs the operation name, the findings, and the discharge plan in that order.

When Sherif Darwish joined as our third co-founder, he brought the same depth from psychiatry. His letters have a completely different structure — longer histories, different clinical terminology, different expectations from the receiving GP. The system had to accommodate both. It does, because the people building it write these letters themselves.

Docyment is built by two practising consultants and a developer. Not a product team that interviewed some doctors. Three people who felt the problem, designed the solution, and use it in their own clinics.

Where Is Docyment Now?

Docyment is available at app.docyment.com, with native iPhone and Android apps. The connected clinic workflow includes booking and records; WhatsApp messaging and clinic analytics are switched on for your clinic on request.

Free is for one person and includes 20 document generations a month, 100 patients and 10 templates. No credit card is required. Test it with your own formats before deciding whether it fits.

UK Pro is £20 per clinician seat a month. Admin and reception seats are free and unlimited on Pro. Enterprise is available by agreement. See current pricing for plan details.

I use Docyment in my own clinical workflow. Its purpose is to bring document preparation and review into the clinic day; each practice should measure how it fits its own process.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Docyment an AI scribe?

Docyment is a connected clinic platform. Clinical documentation is one capability within its booking, records and communication workflow. One consultation can produce a clinic letter, referral and prescription for clinician review.

Can I use Docyment for private practice and NHS clinics?

Docyment can draft documents in your clinical templates. Use with NHS patient data depends on your organisation's approvals and policies; product availability does not establish that approval.

How is Docyment different from Dragon Medical dictation?

Compare the exact versions and workflows you are considering. Docyment accepts Dictate, Record, Write and Scan and drafts into your clinical templates for review and approval.

What specialties does Docyment support?

You can use stock templates or create formats for your specialty. We can help set up the templates your clinic uses. Check the configuration you need before relying on a particular document type.

Is patient data safe with Docyment?

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. We do not use patient data to train AI models, and our AI providers' API terms exclude it from training by default. The clinician reviews and approves documents before use. See security and data protection.

Why I Built an AI Clinical Letter Generator: A UK Consultant's Story