Ep156: AI scribes in hospital

The burden of clinical documentation is one of the top reasons given for job dissatisfaction in medicine. Physicians typically give up an hour of personal time per shift to complete paperwork and the frustration is experienced by patients too, who sometimes feel that their doctors are more focused on the computer. The promise of ambient AI scribes is that they could slash the time you spend hovering over the keyboard and in general practice some 40 percent of Australian GPs are using scribes already. Among private specialists, adoption been slower and use of ambient scribes in hospital has been prohibited until now. In this podcast we hear the outcomes of two pilot studies of ambient scribes in Queensland’s public hospital networks; the quality of scribe outputs and the errors you need to keep an eye out for. The efficiencies gains differ from the clinic, to the ward round to the ED, and not all specialty consults benefit to the same degree. And while some have raised questions about the gaps in skills that might result from this technology, todays’ guests expand on the training opportunities that it creates too. Part 2 of this series explores further benefits from giving large language models access not just to the consult, but the whole patient record.  Chapters 6:58     Quality of outputs from ambient scribes 17:53   Real world time savings 21:55   Ward Rounds and the ED GuestsDr Andrew Vanlint FRACP AFRACMA (North Adelaide Local Health Network; Adelaide University; Genesis Care)  Professor Ian Scott FRACP MHA MEd (Princess Alexandra Hospital, Metro South Health; University of Queensland) Dr Adam Brand FACEM MPH (Gold Coast University Hospital)   ProductionProduction by Mic Cavazzini DPhil. Music licenced from Epidemic Sound includes ‘End of the Ocean’ by Tellsonic and ‘Multicolor’ by Chill Cole. Feedback on this episode kindly provided by Dr Aidan Tan, Dr Simeon Wong, Dr Joseph Lee, Assoc Prof Paul Cooper PhD and Loryn Einstein. Image by da-kuk purchased from Getty Images. Visit the Pomegranate Health web page for a transcript and supporting references. Add educational activity to MyCPD. Subscribe through any podcasting app or our email alerts list.