Dora Advance Goes Live in the US

Just before Christmas, a patient at Dell Medical School at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas completed a routine follow-up after eye surgery. They discussed their recovery, reviewed warning signs, asked questions about post-operative care, and confirmed their next appointment. They were doing well.

By clinical standards, the interaction was unremarkable. Around 15,000 patients in the United States go through the same post-cataract follow-up every day.

What was different was not the care, but the clinician. The patient was talking with Dora, Ufonia's AI clinical assistant. It marked the first US trial call and a milestone we have been building towards for the past two years as we advance towards our goal: the automation of routine clinical interactions that comprise the majority of American healthcare.

The Road to Austin

This moment was an intentional step on our path to transform healthcare. Our US launch builds on deployments that began in the UK and extended through clinical trials in Europe and Canada. Each setting tested a different aspect of artificial clinical intelligence, from regulatory interpretation to safety governance to patient expectations.

In the UK, we have conducted more than 150,000 autonomous clinical conversations across fifteen NHS Trusts. That scale allowed us to understand how clinical voice AI adds value, where we need to change processes, and how safety must be embedded into every interaction. Trials in Europe and Canada tested whether those learnings held in different healthcare systems, languages, and regulatory environments. TL;DR - they do!

As the largest healthcare market, the United States was always our next destination. American ophthalmology faces a capacity challenge that demands new approaches, and the incentives to drive change.

Our route to Austin came through sustained relationship building. The Innovate UK Global Incubator Programme enabled our engagement with Texas Medical Center, opening access to the world's largest medical ecosystem. ABHI trade visits to Austin created the connection with Dell Medical Center, where our clinical trial is now underway. These were not shortcuts, but the necessary steps to enter a new market with the right partners and appropriate oversight.

Rigour at Scale

Primum non nocere — first, do no harm — underpins the ethics of care. Transforming decades of clinical practice demands that same standard. It's why a third of our team comes from clinical backgrounds, and why we chose to run a formal clinical trial with defined protocols, ethical approval, and systematic data collection. Our claims about safety and efficacy are grounded in evidence, not marketing assertions.

This reflects how we think about AI in healthcare and what we learned from scaling in the NHS. Conversational AI that interacts directly with patients is not a consumer product. It is a clinical tool with the potential to influence outcomes. The only responsible way to deploy it is with the discipline of clinical research.

Scale in the NHS taught us things no pilot could. The post-operative period is when questions accumulate and anxiety peaks. Most procedures are uncomplicated, yet patients and clinicians value the reassurance of a structured check-in. Technology enables personalised follow-up at scale, identifying patients who do need intervention and routing them to clinical review before minor issues become serious ones.

It also helped refine the interaction between technology and humans. Ambiguous symptoms and complex questions still benefit from human oversight. Dora is designed to recognise these boundaries and escalate appropriately, providing a reliable and faster model of care.

Our scientific research underpins this experience. We're developing and publishing evaluation frameworks to validate the core tenets of clinical conversations, allowing us to test them through large-scale simulation and identify failure modes before they reach patients. These are operational systems embedded into Dora — we'll dive deeper into this topic in future blogs.

Why Now, and Why Ophthalmology

Ophthalmology is the most common outpatient specialty in the world. The pressures facing US ophthalmology are well documented. The American Academy of Ophthalmology projects a 30% workforce gap by 2035, driven by declining surgeon supply and rising demand. The average ophthalmologist is now in their mid-fifties, while cataract volumes continue to increase as the population ages.

At the same time, practices are stretched across repeated, routine interactions. Routine check-ins, post-operative follow-up, pre-operative preparation, medication questions, and standard queries all consume capacity. Collectively, they absorb substantial staff and patient time, despite following largely predictable patterns. They leave little space to optimise and educate for individual patient needs.

This is neither sustainable nor necessary.

The question is no longer whether routine clinical conversations will be automated, but when, by whom, and under what safeguards. Our view is that the answer must be grounded in clinical evidence, transparent safety frameworks, and technology built by people who understand healthcare as a lived system rather than as a lift-and-shift from other industries. That is the approach we are taking.

The Launch Partner Programme

Alongside the US trial, I'm delighted that we are now opening the waitlist for our US Launch Partner Programme in ophthalmology.

Launch Partners will be practices that want to participate in the next phase of US deployment. They will receive early access and preferential terms, and in return will work closely with us to shape integration, operational fit, and patient experience within US practice settings. These partnerships are not transactional. They are collaborative by design.

At this stage, we are looking for practices that share a commitment to evidence, safety, and thoughtful adoption, and who want to help define how autonomous clinical communication is introduced into American healthcare.

The Road Ahead

The coming months will focus on evidence generation and learning. Our clinical trials are expanding across Texas, providing the data needed for broader deployment. We are also launching The Transformation, a newsletter and podcast series exploring care pathway redesign, AI safety, and the future of ophthalmology with clinicians and researchers working at the frontier of change. All of this builds towards a full US launch at ASCRS 2026 in Washington, DC.

Between now and then, we will publish regularly on what we are learning, what is proving difficult, and what is changing our thinking. For practices evaluating AI, our aim is to be a credible partner to support change and innovation.

The Momentum Is Building

The automation of routine clinical care is already underway. The first US trial calls are complete. The evidence gathering has begun.

The practices that engage early will help define how this transition happens — and will operate with a different level of efficiency and resilience while others continue to deliberate.

For those who want to be part of that future, the conversation is now open. I look forward to working with you.

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Visit our website to join the Launch Partner Programme waitlist, or schedule a conversation with our team to learn more about Dora Advance and our US clinical trial.