OpRESTORE AI-Patient Navigator Study

OpRESTORE is a national NHS service that supports UK veterans with complex physical health problems linked to their military service. Veterans referred to OpRESTORE often need care from many different specialists, including surgeons, pain teams, rehabilitation, and mental health services. Currently, decisions about which service is most appropriate are made by a multidisciplinary team (MDT) of clinicians. While effective, this process can be slow, resource-intensive, and sometimes difficult for patients to navigate. This study will develop and test a new digital "navigator" tool that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to support these referral decisions. The aim is to see whether the tool can safely and accurately match veterans to the right care pathway, while reducing delays and improving patient experience. The project will be carried out in several stages: * Reviewing past OpRESTORE records to design the AI model. * Testing the tool alongside the MDT ("shadow testing") to check whether its recommendations match the clinical decisions. * Running a case-control study to compare outcomes between patients referred using AI support and those referred by the MDT alone. * Creating and testing a structured self-referral form to make it easier for veterans to access care directly. The main outcome will be whether the AI tool makes the same referral decisions as the MDT. Other outcomes include patient satisfaction, quality of life, time taken to reach the right service, and overall costs. The study will recruit veterans aged 18 or older who are referred to OpRESTORE with a physical health need. It will run for two years. If successful, this approach could free up clinician time, shorten waits for treatment, and improve veterans' health and wellbeing, while laying the foundations for wider use of AI-supported navigation across the NHS.