The Conversation - Some clinicians are using AI to write health records. What do you need to know?
Written by Prof Stacy Carter, Prof Farah Magrabi & Dr Yves Saint James Aquino
[Medical] Records are essential for safe and effective health care. Clinicians must make good records to keep their registration. Health services must provide good record systems to be accredited. Records are also legal documents: they can be important in insurance claims or legal actions.
But writing stuff down (or dictating notes or letters) takes time… So there’s understandable excitement, from all kinds of health-care professionals, about “ambient AI” or “digital scribes”.
Recently, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency released a code of practice for using digital scribes. The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners released a fact sheet. Both warn clinicians that they remain responsible for the contents of their medical records.
There’s very limited data or real world evidence on the performance of digital scribes… And the scribe made mistakes – for example, recording the wrong diagnosis, or recording that a test had been done, when it needed to be done.
Maybe one day, digital scribes will mean better records and better interactions with our clinicians. But right now, we need good evidence that these tools can deliver in real-world clinics, without compromising quality, safety or ethics.