by McCollum Consultants
NHS Resolution’s Annual Report and Accounts for 2025/26 confirms a shift that has been building for several years. Under its “Resolution Through Collaboration” strategy, a record 84% of clinical claims were resolved without formal court proceedings, and its mediation service continued to grow. Claims are increasingly being resolved earlier and more collaboratively, before the machinery of litigation is fully engaged.
For expert witnesses, this raises the premium on a particular kind of work. As early resolution becomes more important, so does the ability to deliver a high-quality, well-reasoned expert opinion quickly. Parties trying to reach a fair settlement early need evidence they can rely on early, and that places real weight on both the quality of the expert and the speed with which sound work can be produced.
Quality first
McCollum Consultants is a chambers of clinical expert witnesses rather than an agency, built by experts for experts. Our members provide independent, high-quality medico-legal reports in clinical negligence and in complex, high-value personal injury matters, covering breach of duty, causation and prognosis for litigation, mediation and court proceedings. Every expert completes rigorous medico-legal training and takes part in regular performance appraisal, and the firm holds ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certification. Quality is the foundation, and it is not something we are willing to trade for speed.
Speed, without cutting corners
The way to deliver quality more quickly is to remove the effort that does not require clinical expertise. A large part of report preparation is spent reading, ordering and cross-checking medical records before any analysis can begin. That is where our work with ALLDOQ comes in.
ALLDOQ Verify takes a first pass through the medical records and returns an ordered, referenced foundation: the clinical facts extracted into structured tables, a date-ordered chronology built from the records, and plain-language answers that each carry a citation back to the source page. Our experts begin from that referenced draft rather than from a raw bundle, which means more of their time goes into the clinical reasoning that only they can provide. Because every statement traces back to the document, page and exact text, the resulting reports are both quicker to produce and easier to stand behind.
Responsible use of AI
The AI does not form the opinion. It prepares the evidence so the expert can apply their judgement with the whole record in view. The expert remains responsible for the analysis and the conclusions, and the referenced foundation makes their reasoning easier to follow and to check. Used this way, AI supports the standard of expert evidence rather than diluting it.
Learning together
NHS Resolution’s strategy is explicit about collaboration and about using evidence to learn. That sits naturally with how we work. Through our education programme we bring together experts alongside claimant and defendant lawyers who specialise in personal injury and clinical negligence, with continuing professional development for our experts and dedicated training for legal professionals on interpreting medical evidence and instructing expert witnesses effectively. Bringing both sides of the profession into the same room, to build shared understanding of what good expert evidence looks like, complements the collaborative direction NHS Resolution is setting.
The direction of travel
The system is moving towards earlier, fairer, more collaborative resolution. Meeting it well calls for recognised experts, efficient and responsible use of technology, and a genuinely collaborative relationship between experts and the lawyers who instruct them. That combination is what McCollum Consultants is built to provide.
McCollum Consultants. A network of clinical expert witnesses. mccollumconsultants.com