Post: AI ‘scribe’ increases face-to-face time with patients

A doctor, standing, speaks with a patient who is sitting down. PHILADELPHIA— When doctors teamed with an artificial intelligence tool that “listened” in and took notes on patient visits, the tool significantly decreased the time providers spent interacting with patients’ notes instead of with the patients themselves. It also decreased the “pajama time” spent reviewing patient cases after working hours, according to a new JAMA Network Open study conducted by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

“This small study shows early but promising results. In an era where we need find ways to decrease physician burnout and increase the workforce of primary care providers, these results provide a glimmer of hope,” said Kevin B. Johnson, MD, MS , the David L. Cohen University Professor at Penn and the director of the Artificial Intelligence for Ambulatory Care (AI4AI) Lab at Penn Medicine.

Penn Medicine is in the early stages of working with a “scribe” tool that uses artificial intelligence to decipher the conversations between doctors and patients and take accurate notes in the patients’ electronic health records (EHRs). Currently, a group of volunteer clinicians are using this “ambient listening” tool with patients who have given permission for it to be used during their visits.

For the study, 46 clinicians participating in the early phase of the project completed a survey. Johnson and his team found a 20 percent decrease in the clinicians’ time spent interacting with EHRs during and after patient visits, with a 30 percent decrease in time spent after working hours, dubbed “pajama time” by some because it usually takes place at home, at night.

In pure time measures, that translated to a two-minute increase in time that could be spent directly conversing with patients, face-to-face, per visit. Additionally, the analysis found that clinicians gained approximately 15 minutes of personal time at home, each day, that otherwise had been spent working in the EHR. One of the doctors responded in the survey that the AI scribe was “cutting back on my documentation time by about two hours, cumulative, each week.”

This time savings is important for both […]

AI ‘scribe’ increases face-to-face time with patients