How AI is helping knee and hip replacement patients in a Shropshire hospital

Use of artificial intelligence is helping to get patients home sooner from a specialist Shropshire hospital after hip and knee replacements, a meeting heard.

Researchers from the school of medicine at Staffordshire’s Keele University have been using machine learning to provide treatment pathways for patients at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital near Oswestry.

Machine learning is where computer algorithms learn by continually crunching data.

It has been helping the hospital provide more personalised and effective care, a meeting of the NHS trust that runs the hospital heard on Wednesday (May 6, 2026).

Get the latest headlines delivered straight to your inbox with the Shropshire Star’s free newsletter

Amr Selim, a National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHCR) academic clinical lecturer with Keele University, told the board meeting that the project was aimed at expediting patient recovery, shortening stays, and reducing costs.

The board was told that the research involved 3,025 patients who were admitted for primary hip and knee arthroplasty from April 2023 to March 2024.

The meeting was told that patients who underwent the enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) pathway were compared with those undergoing standard care.

Results included the ERAS group being discharged after an average of one day, compared to average three day stays on the wards under standard care procedures.

The board meeting was told that patients had been contacted after discharge to make sure that they were not being sent home but were living in pain.

Researchers have been able to predict surgery outcomes by using patient data including where they live and a range of other characteristics, the background papers revealed.

They have also been monitoring how many patients have been readmitted within 30 days, infections caught, and the number of deaths.

One of the findings revealed that spinal only anaesthetics, without the use of general anaesthetics, was “consistently associated with improved discharge success.”