CareRoute

54% of young people consult AI before a doctor, using tools with no safeguards. CareRoute is the safe version: NHS triage that routes to real care, not a diagnosis.

Comment

Inspiration

***DEMO VIDEO********: https://www.loom.com/share/ff84e4d1ec914e52a9d688cb623ac4cf

This didn’t start at a hackathon. It started at the AI Youth Council in Birmingham. Invited by CERSI-AI, NIHR, and Great Ormond Street Hospital to their launch event at the Birmingham Exchange, I sat in a room with clinicians, NHS innovators, and young people and heard the same thing repeated: AI tools are becoming the first point of contact for young people’s health concerns — and they are not always the safest. During a session with Dr Qasim Malik, I proposed the idea of a centralised healthcare chatbot built on four pillars: Trusted Sources grounded in NHS institutions; Specialisation with tailored clinical responses; Clinical-Grade Data trained on real cases and research; and Guardrails and Escalation with clear pathways to clinicians, never away from them. That idea became CareRoute. Working as a degree apprentice at Pfizer, I’ve seen firsthand how regulated product launches work — and how quickly a poorly designed healthcare tool can cause harm. The NHS referral pathway is broken for young people not because the system is bad, but because no one built a safe front door to it. 54% of young people consult AI before a doctor. NHS 999 handlers report calls from patients who checked ChatGPT first before deciding whether to call an ambulance. CareRoute is that safe front door.

What it does

CareRoute triages your symptoms using Claude and routes you to the right NHS service — no diagnosis, no scaremongering, no phone call required if you’d rather not. Users describe their symptoms, select how long they’ve had them, and tick any red-flag warning signs. CareRoute returns one of five triage levels with plain English advice and direct booking links: self-care at home with a link to the nearest pharmacy; see a GP with direct NHS App online booking; NHS 111 online; NHS Talking Therapies self-referral for mental health (no GP or parental consent required for 16+); and A&E immediately with the nearest emergency department.

How we built it Using Claude as an AI coding assistant, we built Care Route - a UK healthcare navigation assistant. Frontend: React 19 + Vite with Tailwind CSS and shadcn/ui components. Features an animated WebGL orb (using OGL) that responds to voice state changes. Backend: Node.js + Express handling multiple AI pipelines via Runware:

  • Claude for medical guidance, community comments, and GP ranking
  • MiniMax TTS for spoken audio responses with browser fallback
  • Faster-Whisper for audio transcription Maps: Google Maps Embed API for the GP finder with postcode/location search. Scraper: Python with Scrapling for NHS GP data and community content. --- Challenges we ran into
  • Integrating multiple AI services with proper error handling and fallbacks
  • Building voice input that works across different browser capabilities (Web Speech API vs MediaRecorder)
  • Creating a calm, trustworthy UI that doesn't alarm users while still flagging emergencies
  • Parsing structured JSON from AI responses for consistent UI rendering

- Managing async parallel requests for consult + community comments without blocking

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • End-to-end voice and text input flow with AI-generated responses in under 5 seconds
  • Emergency modal that stops playback and displays critical warnings
  • Community comments founded by the scraper so that users can feel more comforable since they know others have had this issue too.
  • GP finder with nearby practice ranking based on the user's condition
  • Report history that lets users reuse previous consultations
  • Graceful fallbacks: TTS fails → browser speech; voice fails → text input; API fails → graceful error messages
  • Single-command startup: npm run dev runs both frontend and backend

What we learned

Healthcare AI isn’t about capability it’s about trust and compliance.

What's next for CareRoute

Phase 2 integrates the GP Connect API for direct deep-link booking into GP practice systems. Phase 3 is a WhatsApp-integrated version for Nigeria, where 1 doctor serves 2,500 patients and mobile-first is the only viable delivery channel. Our funding target is the NIHR i4i THRIVE grant of up to £150,000 opening April 2026 — the same NIHR network that brought this idea to life at the AI Youth Council.

Built With

Share this project:

Updates