KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Artificial intelligence is changing the way we live and work. An app developed in 2018 called “Abridge” is helping doctors save time while allowing patients to better understand and retain what their doctor tells them.
The University of Kansas Health System is considering implementing the app system-wide. Right now, only a handful of doctors are using the technology, including Dr. Gregory Ator, an ENT, who called the A.I. “life-changing.”
Abridge records his conversations with patients, summarizing therir treatment plans, reasons for the visit, and medical history. “Almost before the patient leaves the office, the conversation has been transcribed, and not a word-for-word courtroom style transcript, but a summarization of the conversation,” he said.
Typically, Ator would type the notes himself, but this essentially does it for him. Not only that, but the app can take medical terminology and turn it into words the patient actually understands.
“The nice thing about this technology is that it allows us to have a clinical conversation, just one-on-one, and then worry about the documentation later,” he said.
He explained that it gives him hours back with his family. Normally when he gets home, he’d work on patient’s charts, which cuts in on family or “pajama time.” Instead, he goes over what the A.I. summarized, just to make sure it didn’t misunderstand something, which he said doctors are trained to do anyways.
“One of the concerns we have is the trustworthiness of these technologies,” he said. “Sometimes they so-call hallucinate meaning make stuff up, and we are not interested in that as doctors.”
The University of Kansas Health System said doctors can spend up to five hours a day charting, but Abridge can drastically cut that down to an hour or less.
“We’re excited about the technology and the advancements it’s providing us,” added Tony Jenkins, who is the assistant director of I.T. Initiatives at KU Health System.
Jenkins works with artificial intelligence for the hospital, looking at how it can help doctors and their patients. This is just one tool the health system is looking at implementing full-time, but they do so with caution.
“We have to make sure we’re exploring all the ethical dimensions related to the responsible use of A.I. within the healthcare industry,” he said.
When asked if artificial intelligence is getting rid of people’s jobs, Jenkins said no.
The hospital system is about to end a two-month beta test to see if it wants to roll out the app system-wide. So far, only 10 doctors are using it.
