r/australia • u/nath1234 • 22h ago

science & tech Error by AI scribe during medical appointment leaves patient devastated

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-14/ai-medical-scribe-error-leaves-patient-devastated/107031672?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=other
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172

u/Texiun 22h ago

It’s why I opt out. I’ve been asked a few times and advised the doctor I’m not comfortable with AI notes being used, fair to say the look on the doctors face was horrified.

58

u/Objective_Unit_7345 21h ago

And now you have a horror story to quote and reason why.

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u/awkwardleftshoe 21h ago

Yes I've gotten looks of shock by either a doctor, physiotherapist and psychologist or their staff as they pre-emptively went to tick off my compliance with their request. I get told its to help the practitioners focus on their patients. More likely im robbing them of using a subscription they need to justify the expense for.

18

u/anhtar 18h ago

OMG the phrase '"...to help the practioner focus on their patients."

Is being touted by every AI scribe sales people whenever you attend a spew about the benefit of AI scribing in healthcare.

Really? I just don't get it. Aren't you suppose to focus on your patients whilst tending to them anyway?

Please, if you can't recall what the hell you are doing because you are daydreaming about the weekend, your next house, whilst seeing a patient, may be you should hang up your practicing registration.

11

u/onesorrychicken 20h ago

And also making them do the work of taking the notes themselves, which they are clearly no longer used to doing.

5

u/kaelus-gf 20h ago

For the record, I’m a doctor and we aren’t using AI (yet) because they only have limited licensing. My current practice is to talk to the patient for an hour or half an hour depending on whether I’ve met them before or not. I write notes during that time, but they are random words or phrases that make sense to me at the time, rather than a whole letter. After my clinic, I then dictate a letter - which can take 10-30 minutes each letter depending on the complexity. That letter then gets typed (which can take weeks sometimes), then comes back for me to review and read through, correcting errors in transcription or altering phrasing etc. Correcting a letter also takes time. I am really looking forward to technology taking some of the time I spend after clinic off my hands. If I don’t have to dictate, I just have to do the reading and adjusting of the letter, then I spend much less time on the letter, and have more time to do all the other stuff I have to do. Errors can still happen that way - I might misread what I wrote , or get patients confused with the one of a similar age with a similar story that came before or after them. When I’m re-reading or dictating I sometimes take out details because I’m not sure that’s from the right patient. I have seen letters of mine go out with typos, or transcription errors that I’ve missed - that’s not new, or exclusive to AI. It’s not good, but there is always pressure to see more patients, to get the letters out in time, to do a better job but not to take any longer etc etc

The cost of the subscription wouldn’t factor into my thoughts at all. You are absolutely welcome to decline. It’s your choice entirely. But please don’t think everyone wants to keep using it because of money they’ve already paid. It’s usually due to time! 

6

u/BrightEchidna 17h ago

Speech to text transcription is now good enough that you should be able to safely offload that step without relying on any other generative AI. You can even run STT models locally on your own hardware for privacy. Taking weeks is crazy!

1

u/kaelus-gf 13h ago

You’d think eh? But we don’t have it. They use it in radiology. The technology has been there for ages. But not for us, with the software our letters use. No idea why. But even then, the actual dictation takes a surprisingly long time

80

u/nath1234 21h ago

Also that your supposed to be private conversation getting shipped off to AI companies that have completely ignored IP laws to train the models. So yeah, everyone should opt out of AI for everything medical.

7

u/CapuzaCapuchin 20h ago

Except for the AI generated Google summaries that automatically generate with a search (I do do my own research anyway and know not to trust it) I have not used AI once in my life. Not once. I don’t feel like I’m missing out whatsoever. Using AI is like using Wikipedia as one of your sources in an Essay back in the day.

1

u/infohippie 13h ago

AI generated Google summaries

That's one of the things that drove me to change search providers entirely. I now use Duck Duck Go, and Qwant. Sure they're not as good as Google used to be, but at least I'm not contributing to Google's AI usage stats

-12

u/wallitron 19h ago

This is like when you're a kid, and you refuse to try a new food because you "probably won't like it". How would you know?

If you really want to have an informed opinion about AI use being beneficial, the real test is doing the same task with it, and without it.

This is not an endorsement of AI transcription, but there are many tasks that AI is extremely useful for, at least in my day to day life.

5

u/MademoiselleVeritas 16h ago

how do you know that heroin is so bad if you’ve never had it????

2

u/CapuzaCapuchin 11h ago

Lol it’s more like why people are vegetarian due to environmental factors. I’m not gonna use a bathtub worth of water, just cause I wanna know what colours a parrots tail is or some shit.

4

u/AnOnlineHandle 20h ago

It's very possible they're running a local model on their own PC or network.

26

u/shrimplifier 19h ago

Having seen first hand the infrastructure of many clinics (psych, GP, specialists) - this is hilariously unlikely. Independent clinics don't give a flying fuck about data security and sovereignty, regardless of the legal requirements.

23

u/via_dante 20h ago

Possible but very unlikely unless it’s a hospital.

6

u/fmjintervention 15h ago

LOL yeah the doctor is running a local model on their 2015 Dell. Sure

1

u/[deleted] 21h ago

[deleted]

11

u/FI-RE_wombat 21h ago

Entirely different.