Roadmap for AI Scribes in Aotearoa

Medical AI scribes have the potential to change the way clinicians take medical notes. By automatically converting patient-clinician conversations and generating structured clinical notes for electronic health records, they can reduce administrative tasks for clinicians, enabling them to focus more on their patients. ¹ AI scribes are also purported to increase accuracy and standardisation and support up-to-date patient records.²

The most advanced systems use a combination of AI techniques (speech recognition, natural language processing, and large language models) to interpret, summarise and format medical conversations.

With the potential of AI scribes comes important risks to consider, including to privacy, security, data sovereignty, patient consent, as well as through bias, inaccuracy, and “hallucinations”. It can be difficult to manage these risks as they haven’t yet been fully understood or quantified.

This research is timely given the recent endorsement of two AI scribe tools by the National AI and Algorithm Expert Advisory Group. To help promote the safe and effective deployment of this technology, Assoc Prof. V Selak (UoA) and a team from HealthNZ/Te Whatu Ora (HNZ/TWO) have received HRC funding to develop a roadmap for their safe, effective, and equitable use in Aotearoa. 

“We will start by reviewing the available evidence and then survey clinicians and health managers to understand service-specific use cases, preferences for features, benefits/risks, training needs and implementation needs. We will also facilitate hui with experts and other stakeholders; clinical, consumer, Māori, Pacific, management, information technology, and health professional regulation representatives as part of developing guidance on risks and the roadmap”. – Assoc Prof V Selak.

The resulting AI scribe Roadmap for Aotearoa will include a set of recommendations for optimising the use of AI scribes in clinical settings across Aotearoa, tailored to the unique needs and context of our healthcare system, to ensure that these tools support quality healthcare for all New Zealanders.

Research Team: 

A/Prof V Selak (PI), A/Prof R Dobson, Mr R Kyle (Kai Tahu, Kati Māmoe, Waitaha, Moeraki) Dr C K Jin, Dr R Radecki & Dr M Rosin.

References:

[1] Tierney AA, Gayre G, Hoberman B, Mattern B, Ballesca M, Kipnis P, Liu V, Lee K. Ambient artificial intelligence scribes to alleviate the burden of clinical documentation. NEJM Catalyst 2024;5(3); doi: 10.1056/CAT.23.0404.

[2] Balloch J, Sridharan S, Oldham G, Wray J, Gough P, Robinson R, Sebire NJ, Khalil S, Asgari E, Tan C, Taylor A, Pimenta D. Use of an ambient artificial intelligence tool to improve quality of clinical documentation. Future Healthc J 2024;11(3):100157; doi: 10.1016/j.fhj.2024.100157.

Content Manager:

Nathan Baker, AI in Health Research Network

Nathan.baker@auckland.ac.nz