DonateLife Victoria is preparing to launch an AI-powered virtual clinical assistant designed to help organ donation coordinators quickly retrieve trusted clinical and operational information during complex cases.
The Virtual Clinical Assistant, or VCA, has undergone six months of development, testing and clinical review and is expected to go live within weeks.
DonateLife Victoria general manager Tony Holland said the tool would allow nurses to search thousands of pages of clinical guidance using natural language, including voice-to-text on their phones.
“The organ donation space and process is incredibly complex and there are many moving parts and dozens of people involved in it,” he said.
“From the point of having the first conversation with the family to determine consent, right through to knife to skin and the transportation of the organs to the transplant sector, our nurses drive all of that.”
Mr Holland said staff previously relied on manually locating and digesting relevant information in numerous, lengthy clinical guidelines and operating procedures.
“The driving force behind this project was to try to simplify and streamline their work – to make it easier for them to have access to information.”
The assistant is designed to answer questions ranging from interstate eligibility criteria and organ transport contacts to blood packaging requirements, hospital parking and pharmacy opening hours.
It will also provide a confidence rating and a hyperlink to the relevant source material, allowing nurses to check the answer directly.
Mr Holland said the system was not designed to generate new clinical advice or replace clinicians.
“We’re not replacing the skill of the clinician with AI. AI is not coming up with answers. AI is providing the answers from documentation that’s already available. We’re trying to simplify and streamline this work.”
The tool draws from a controlled SharePoint environment containing selected clinical documents, rather than searching across all organisational information.
Mr Holland said this was intended to ensure the assistant accessed only approved material and avoided irrelevant or potentially confusing content.
The project was co-designed with doctors and nurses from its earliest stages, with clinicians involved in testing the concept and shaping how the system would work.
DonateLife Victoria also sought approval through an Australian Red Cross Lifeblood AI clinical governance committee and advised state and federal health authorities about the project.
Clinicians supplied dozens of test questions, while further testing examined whether differently worded versions of the same query produced consistent answers.
Mr Holland noted, “You have to put the groundwork in to actually make sure that it does not ghost or make it up,” adding, “There will be ongoing compliance testing as we go along the path – particularly in the first few months.”
An AI clinical review committee would monitor questions and responses after launch, while users would be able to provide immediate feedback if they identify an error.
Mr Holland said the organisation had deliberately taken a cautious approach.
“We have slowed down to go fast and I think it’s been productive. I think once it hits the ground, it will go running pretty hard and then we’ll really see what they think of it.”
DonateLife Victoria expects the assistant to save small amounts of time across multiple tasks rather than delivering a single dramatic reduction in case duration.
Mr Holland said those gains could allow nurses to spend more time with donor families, reduce unnecessary calls to senior clinicians and potentially lessen fatigue during long cases.
“It won’t save hours in every case, but it will save five minutes here, 10 minutes there. What that means is the nurses can then spend more time with the families to build a rapport.”
Mr Holland said the AI project was intended to support the workforce, not reduce it.
“This is not a staff-saving venture. We’re not going to be reducing our staffing at all as a result of this.”
Powered by Agentforce, Salesforce’s AI agent platform, the VCA forms part of a broader Salesforce implementation developed over the past five to six years aimed at replacing fragmented spreadsheets, documents and hard drives.
Mr Holland said Salesforce now acted as a central platform across a complex network of health services and partner organisations, noting “Salesforce is the source of truth.”
A future phase is expected to allow staff to query information held within Salesforce itself, including contact details, on-call staff and operational information.
Add Comment