CEIH evaluates AI assistance to support innovation in SA Health

The Com­mis­sion on Excel­lence and Inno­va­tion in Health (CEIH) has com­plet­ed a pilot eval­u­at­ing how AI assis­tant tools may sup­port admin­is­tra­tive and cor­po­rate work across SA Health. 

The pilot ran from August 2025 to Feb­ru­ary 2026 and involved staff from a range of CEIH teams. 

We looked at how well AI Assis­tants could help with:

• Draft­ing documents
• Sum­maris­ing information
• Man­ag­ing large vol­umes of material
• Coor­di­nat­ing meetings

The project also exam­ined how AI could reduce admin­is­tra­tive work­load and improve day-to-day efficiency. 

Across the pilot, staff report­ed using the AI Assis­tant to com­plete rou­tine tasks more quick­ly and reduce the effort required to work through large vol­umes of information.

This includ­ed sum­maris­ing lengthy doc­u­ments and email threads, locat­ing key files more effi­cient­ly, and pro­duc­ing ini­tial drafts of briefs and stake­hold­er com­mu­ni­ca­tions, which were then reviewed and refined to ensure accu­ra­cy and con­sis­ten­cy in tone.

Some par­tic­i­pants also used meet­ing sum­maries and action lists to sup­port fol­low-up after busy meet­ing schedules.

Impor­tant­ly, the pilot was designed not just as a tech­nol­o­gy tri­al, but as an evi­dence-based eval­u­a­tion of how AI may be safe­ly and effec­tive­ly applied with­in a pub­lic health sys­tem context. 

The eval­u­a­tion focused on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty impacts, work­force expe­ri­ence, gov­er­nance require­ments, adop­tion pat­terns, and the impor­tance of train­ing and AI literacy.

Find­ings have been shared with the Depart­ment for Health and Well­be­ing to sup­port broad­er sys­tem-lev­el dis­cus­sions about AI use across SA Health.

While Microsoft 365 Copi­lot was the main tool eval­u­at­ed, the project has con­tributed more broad­ly to the CEIH’s inno­va­tion agen­da by help­ing build under­stand­ing of how AI assis­tance may sup­port work in com­plex health­care environments.