N.S. doctors welcome AI note-taking tool, expert says public transparency important

More than 440 medical professionals in Nova Scotia have started using artificial intelligence to record patient visits since a pilot program launched last June, according to statistics shared by the Department of Health and Wellness.

The program, initiated by Canada Health Infoway, provides free one-year licences to eligible primary care clinicians across Canada for AI documentation tools, which allow health-care providers to capture patient conversations and convert them into real-time summaries for both the doctor and patient.

Nova Scotia has a total of 500 funded licences available in the program.

Shelly McNeil, president of Doctors Nova Scotia, said the association is “very supportive” of new technologies like AI scribe to enhance patient care and help provide doctors a better work-life balance.

Dr. Ajantha Jayabarathan, a Halifax family physician, said she usually spent five minutes or more to complete notes after seeing a patient, but the Mika AI scribe saves her that time and allows her to move on to next tasks faster.

Mika AI scribe is the only AI scribe approved for use by Nova Scotia Health clinics and health-care professionals in the province.

“I think my patients are waiting less to see me,” she said. “Patients really appreciate that there’s a tool to help me as a doctor to help them and for me to be efficient.”

Jayabarathan also finds the transcription results of the AI tool “surprisingly accurate,” though manual editing is still required before putting the notes into electronic medical records.

“I would say 90 per cent of what is transcribed is put within the note itself,” she said. “And because the machine as a tool is writing these things down with a lot of detail, I feel that my notes have a lot more detail than perhaps I would be including.”

According to Nova Scotia’s policy guidance for AI scribe, clinicians must always review and edit outputs to ensure accuracy, and patients have the right to revoke their consent at any time.

‘Relatively safe’ for now

Abhi Kalra, Infoway’s executive vice-president of connected care, said in an interview Tuesday that early results from a survey were “very encouraging” and no concerns have been raised.

According to Infoway, the nine AI scribe technology vendors in the national program were evaluated and selected through various criteria, including their “data security and privacy practices” and “alignment with national and jurisdictional requirements and standards.”

All the vendors are headquartered in Canada.

Frank Rudzicz, a computer science professor at Dalhousie University with research experience in Ontario’s AI scribe technology, said he’s very confident about the technology in general.

He said it’s “relatively safe” when the tool is being used to turn conversations into transcripts, though there could be challenges if it is helping with decision-making.

Nova Scotia Health recommends in its program policy that AI scribe notes should be removed from the tool within seven days.

Rudzicz pointed out that minimizing storage of patient information is “a good thing” to protect privacy, yet it may have a blind spot.

“Imagine if two weeks passed and an error is found in the medical record that the AI scribe produces, and if you don’t have the original data, like the original conversation or any other forms of original data, then you won’t be able to go back and identify the source of the error.”

Rudzicz said patients can request more information about the process and the location of their data, so they have more knowledge about the technology when giving consent.

“I think this is a good thing, as long as we view this as something that we collectively as a province can work on together,” he said.

“Patients and citizens shouldn’t consider ourselves to be data subjects … We should be active participants. We should be part of the conversation.”

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