With new tools, doctors could save up to 95,000 hours annually on admin tasks
Using artificial intelligence (AI) to reduce time spent doing administrative tasks could be the key to healthcare professionals having more time to care for their patients, according to a recent report.
With AI scribe technology, doctors and nurse practitioners spend 70 per cent to 90 per cent less time doing paperwork, reports OntarioMD (OMD), a subsidiary of the Ontario Medical Association (OMA).
With that, 79 per cent of these healthcare professionals can spend more time on patient care.
"Our government is embracing innovation to reduce the administrative burden on family doctors so they can spend more time caring for patients instead of doing duplicative or unnecessary paperwork,” says Sylvia Jones, deputy premier and minister of health. “AI scribe is one of the many innovative initiatives our government is using to help put patients before paperwork that will together free up to 95,000 hours annually for physicians to put back into their practices caring for patients.”
Thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), workers will be able to save up to 12 hours per week at work, according to a previous Thomson Reuters report.
"2.5 million Ontarians are now without a family doctor and forecasts show that will increase dramatically to one in four without one by 2026," says Kimberly Moran, CEO of the Ontario Medical Association. "Rolling out AI scribes to every doctor in the province will allow them to spend more time caring for patients, and is one way we can help prevent the family medicine crisis from becoming a catastrophe."
Doctors recommend use of AI
Many doctors and nurse practitioners are likely to make the technology part and parcel of their work, according to OMD’s survey of more than 150 family doctors and nurse practitioners (NPs) over a three-month period.
Over three-quarters (76 per cent) of participants report a reduction in information overload during patient consultations.
Also, more than four in five (83 per cent) respondents say they would use an AI scribe in their practice long term, and 82 per cent would recommend AI scribes to their colleagues.
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 the Personal Health Information Protection Act, 2004.
The rise of AI in the work sphere is more likely to transform the jobs of workers who are more highly educated, according to a previous report from Statistics Canada (StatCan).
Can AI automate administrative tasks?
The use of AI in the workplace can boost workers’ productivity, says Cristian Grossmann, CEO and co-founder, Beekeeper.
“Businesses are using artificial intelligence to improve the productivity of their employees. One of the benefits of AI for business is that it handles repetitive tasks across an organization so that employees can focus on creative solutions, complex problem-solving, and impactful work.
“From information gathering to initiating the process of filing customer complaints, the manual time needed to complete these tasks has been dramatically reduced by chatbots. It has also improved the overall customer experience. Reducing administrative tasks will also help to eliminate human error from your customer operations.”
The use of artificial intelligence could make working a shortened work week a possibility for most Canadians, according to a previous report.
