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AI-assisted EHR documentation will need human help

Artificial intelligence applied sciences are being more and more relied upon within the healthcare area, significantly in relation to resolution assist, precision medication, and the development of the standard of care. Regarding main care particularly, AI additionally represents a possibility to help with digital well being report documentation.   

A brand new examine printed within the Journal of American Medical Informatics Association this week exhibits that, though AI documentation assistants (or digital scribes) provide nice potential within the main care setting, they will need to be supervised by a human till robust proof is offered for his or her autonomous potential. 

In workshops with main care docs, wrote researchers from the Australian Institute of Health Innovation, “There was consensus that consultations of the future would increasingly involve more automated and AI-supported systems. However, there were differing views on how this human-AI collaboration would work, what roles doctors and AI would take, and what tasks could be delegated to AI.”  

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Researchers labored with main care docs who use EHRs recurrently for documentation functions to grasp their views on future AI documentation assistants. They recognized three main themes that emerged from the discussions: skilled autonomy, human-AI collaboration and new fashions of care.  

First, the docs emphasised the significance of their potential to look after sufferers in their very own means with the talents AI expertise offered.

“If they [patients] think that we’re just getting suggestions from a computer, then maybe they can just get suggestions from a computer. I think it becomes more difficult to convince them that our recommendations are more valuable than what they can pick up on the internet,” stated one doctor.
They famous the need for a bottom-up method to expertise improvement, with a give attention to delivering clear advantages to observe and workflow, and expressed fears round potential authorized issues that might stem from working with an AI assistant.

With regard to human-AI collaboration, docs expressed quite a lot of viewpoints about what duties could possibly be delegated to AI. Many believed that an AI system may help with duties equivalent to documentation, referrals and different paperwork. Most stated that AI methods would lack empathy. 


However, docs additionally mentioned how AI may help with rising fashions of main care, together with preconsultation, cellular well being and telehealth.   


The query of lowering EHR-related clinician burnout has loomed massive, with distributors and researchers attempting to pinpoint main causes – and, in flip, potential options.   

AI has been raised as one such answer, with a number of main EHR distributors providing plans for incorporating the expertise into their workflows. 

But human enter stays important, as the brand new JAMIA examine and different analysis has famous.  

AI may “bring back meaning and purpose in the practice of medicine while providing new levels of efficiency and accuracy,” wrote Stanford researchers in a 2017 Journal of the American Medical Association examine. But, they continued, physicians should “proactively guide, oversee, and monitor the adoption of artificial intelligence as a partner in patient care.”


“AI documentation assistants will likely … be integral to the future primary care consultations. However, these technologies will still need to be supervised by a human until strong evidence for reliable autonomous performance is available. Therefore, different human-AI collaboration models will need to be designed and evaluated to ensure patient safety, quality of care, doctor safety, and doctor autonomy,” wrote the Australian Institute for Health Innovation researchers.


Kat Jercich is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Twitter: @kjercich
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.

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