NBRHC among the first in the world to give patients safe, clinician-approved AI support around the clock

Originally published by North Bay Regional Health Centre (NBRHC) on August 28, 2026.

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Some surgical patients at NBRHC now have access to 24/7 clinician-approved AI support through the recent launch of Seamless Answers — a conversational AI feature within the SeamlessMD platform. This launch places NBRHC among a small group of health systems worldwide offering patients a safe, clinician-approved AI assistant as part of their care.

SeamlessMD is an education tool that has been customized by NBRHC to provide surgical patients with the information needed to prepare for, and recover from, surgery at our Health Centre. SeamlessMD is currently available for ten surgical pathways, including orthopedics, urology, general surgery, women’s, and pediatrics.

Patients who have questions about their recovery outside of business hours usually turn to tools like ChatGPT or Google, but these tools can make errors when answering because it knows nothing about the patient’s specific procedure, medications or care instructions. Seamless Answers was built to close that gap for patients.

Seamless Answers uses retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to answer patients’ questions exclusively from NBRHC’s clinician-approved patient education library already in SeamlessMD. Every answer cites its source and links back to the original page so patients can read the full instructions. When a question falls outside the approved content, patients are directed to contact their care team. The feature supports multiple languages and includes guardrails fine-tuned for clinical environments, ensuring patients receive timely, safe and appropriate answers to their questions.

Since going live this past spring, 48% of patient questions have been asked outside business hours — overnight or on weekends — confirming that this AI feature is filling a critical gap for patients. Of the patients who have tried Seamless Answers, 92% have found it helpful. As one patient shared: “Very helpful. Better than Google.” Another patient said: “Always felt less panicked because of responses received.”