A new study published in the Journal of American Medical Informatics Association this week shows that, although AI documentation assistants (or digital scribes) offer great potential in the primary care setting, they will need to be supervised by a human until strong evidence is available for their autonomous potential.
The study by Macquarie University was highlighted by a recent article in Healthcare ITNews.
The study sought to understand the potential roles of a future artificial intelligence (AI) documentation assistant in primary care consultations and to identify implications for doctors, patients, healthcare system, and technology design from the perspective of general practitioners.
Using co-design workshops with practitioners, the study identified three main themes:
- Professional autonomy
- Human-AI collaboration
- New models care.
The study concluded that different human-AI collaboration models will need to be designed and evaluated to ensure patient safety, quality of care, doctor safety, and doctor autonomy.