AskHattie Staff Use Policy
Version 1.0 · Effective 16 October 2026
AskHattie is now available at the practice. This page sets out what it's for and how you should and shouldn't use it. You'll be asked to accept it the first time you sign in. It takes two minutes to read, and it matters, because AskHattie works with real patient data.
WHAT ASKHATTIE IS FOR
AskHattie helps you with questions your practice data or published guidance can answer. You can use it to:
• Ask about your practice's own data in plain English, such as cohorts, appointments, recall and indicator figures like QOF, and get the answer as figures or a chart.
• Pull a structured summary of what's recorded for a patient, by NHS number or name.
• Look up current guidance from trusted sources (NICE, BNF, MHRA, NHS), with a citation and link.
• Draft administrative wording, such as a patient letter or text, for you to review and send yourself.
It's for everyone at the practice, including managers, reception, administrators and clinical staff, for these same tasks. It only reads your data; it never changes the record.
WHAT YOU MUST NOT DO
Three rules, and the first is the most important:
• Don't put patient-identifiable information into any other AI tool. Not ChatGPT, not Copilot, not anything outside AskHattie. AskHattie exists so you have a safe, UK-hosted place to do this. Everything else is a data breach waiting to happen.
• Only use it for patients in your care. Every query is logged. Look up a record only where you'd have a legitimate reason to open it in the clinical system. It's the same rule you already follow.
• Don't use it to make a clinical decision. AskHattie supports your thinking; it doesn't diagnose, triage, or decide treatment, and it won't try. The decision, and the responsibility for it, stay with you.
WHAT YOU'RE RESPONSIBLE FOR
• Review before you use it. Every answer carries a reminder that AskHattie can make mistakes. Read what it gives you before you act on it or send it.
• It's not the record. A summary is a factual picture of your practice's data as of its last update, not a substitute for opening the patient's clinical record. For anything you'll act on, check the record.
• You own the decision. AskHattie is a reference and drafting aid. Clinical judgement, and accountability for it, remain yours.
IF IT GETS SOMETHING WRONG
It will, sometimes. When an answer looks off, don't act on it. Check it against the record, and tell us so we can fix it:
• Give the answer a thumbs down. These are reviewed every week by our Clinical Safety Officer.
• Report anything concerning via Intercom.
Catching mistakes is genuinely useful to us, so please do flag them.
THINGS IT WILL SIMPLY DECLINE
AskHattie is governed as Health IT under DCB0129 and is not a medical device. It is built to refuse the following, and will say so rather than attempt them:
• Diagnosing a patient, or suggesting a diagnosis.
• Deciding how urgent a patient contact is, or whether someone needs to be seen (triage).
• Recommending treatment or doses, or checking interactions for a named patient.
• Calculating a risk score, or ranking or predicting patients' risk.
• Judging recorded data, for example calling a condition "poorly controlled".
• Anything in a medical emergency.
If you ask for one of these, it will tell you what it can give you instead and point you to your usual process.