Why family doctors across Canada are turning to AI scribes — and what it means for patients

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Dr. Will Stymiest, a family physician in Fredericton, noticed a big change in a fellow doctor a few months ago: He almost always left the office first.

"Since he started using the AI tool, he was leaving before me almost every day," Stymiest said, referring to new software that's used to transcribe and summarize conversations between clinicians and patients. "There's a little bit of jealousy there. This clearly is making a difference for him. Maybe it could make a difference for me, too."

A week into trying out the same AI scribe tool himself, Stymiest said he was won over.

"I've three small kids [to do] two daycare pickups on the way home, so I have to be out at a particular time. I'm so far spending less time in the evenings and on weekends kind of catching up."

Ambient artificial intelligence scribe programs are software that uses a microphone to listen to conversations between clinicians and patients. They filter out small talk off the top and then summarize the visit into a structured medical note that the doctor can use to share with other team members — such as physicians, nurses and physiotherapists — and becomes part of the patient's medical file.

The software also learns or develops its intelligence from extensive datasets of speech samples, such as patient visits.

Stymiest is testing an AI scribe for three months as part of a New Brunswick Medical Society trial of several products.

He said that in addition to his practice, he also sees how it might benefit the province's health-care system. Stymiest figured if he consistently cuts 30 minutes of paperwork daily, he could see up to three additional patients per day, including new ones. In a province with 92,000 people on a waitlist for a primary care provider as of April, the scribes could play a small part in shortening that list.

Other provinces are also interested. The Ontario Medical Association (OMA) recently had physicians evaluate AI scribes to see if they could be used in doctors' offices and hospitals to save physicians time and improve their quality of life.

Dr. Onil Bhattacharyya, director of the Women's College Hospital Institute for Health System Solutions and Virtual Care (WIHV) in Toronto, helped evaluate six AI scribes on such measures as the accuracy and quality of the medical notes and their ability to handle multiple speakers and accents.

Competition among physicians was fierce. "We had 1,000 people sign up for 150 spots," he said. "It's not quite Taylor Swift tickets, but it's close."

To Bhattacharyya, physician interest in AI scribes reflects how they address a pressing problem: "punishing" administrative burdens, including documenting patient visits.

In April, the Ontario government published a list promoting ways for family doctors to "put patients before paperwork" that included AI scribes. The province noted AI scribes will only be used during a visit if the patient gives their consent, and the privacy of patient health information will continue to be protected under existing legislation.