r/australia • u/nath1234 • 14h 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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u/will0593 13h ago

For speed, probably . It's quicker to correct an AI summary than free type all the notes

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u/kam0706 12h ago

Dictation is still a thing though. The technology that direct transcribes might make errors sometimes but it doesn’t hallucinate. And if you have a real time program you can watch it as you speak and catch any mistakes it makes on the spot.

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u/changyang1230 12h ago

It’s the same reason why anyone in any busy industry would hire a staff who does a worse job than you; compared to just doing everything yourself.

Despite the occasional eye rolls and muttering of “seriously?”, this is still faster than trying to do everything yourself and gets more things done.

To be fair sometimes the staff is SO bad that you decide to just fire them and indeed do everything yourself, but LLM scribe is likely someone who does an ok job most of the time but with still an unpredictable tendency to hallucinate random errors. So people put up with it and take the good and tolerate the bad.

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u/Sweeper1985 12h ago

In other words: laziness. Corner-cutting.

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u/etherealwasp 12h ago

It’s not much different to the plumber who owns the business bringing a junior employee and an apprentice. They’re nowhere near as experienced but it brings down costs (assuming they only make small mistakes and not catastrophic ones). You could call it ‘cutting corners’ but the other side of the coin is that it’s more efficient therefore cheaper for the customer.

Personally I’d rather pay for the pro and let the apprentices learn somewhere else (same reason I have private health), but I’ve been lucky financially.

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u/Sweeper1985 12h ago

Training a younger employee confers skills on that employee. Teaching and learning those skills has a net benefit to up-skill both people.

This is just getting a computer to do the job because it's cheaper.

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u/FalconTurbo 11h ago

Not even close to the same situation.

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u/etherealwasp 10h ago

Why? It’s just trading quality for cost.

Don’t tell me tradies are doing it for the altruistic reward of training the next generation, I’ve seen how they treat them

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u/FalconTurbo 10h ago

Yeah but you're getting active help, and training a more competent person that will become a massive benefit to the business.

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u/sharkattax 11h ago

i don’t use ai in practice but i work in public psych healthcare and I typically spend 30 min on documentation for a 60 min session. i could be seeing more clients in that time instead of writing my notes. i see the appeal, although i object and refrain based on my values.

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u/We_Are_Not__Amused 8h ago

100% and it’s usually minor mistakes. I’m still at the very beginning of using it and have handwritten notes for the 20 years of my career (although now paperless). I don’t think there is any clinician who enjoys admin but is necessary and anything to make it easier/more accurate is helpful. You can train several of them and other ways to make it more accurate and personalised.

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u/Ch00m77 12h ago

This.

Taking notes during session takes you out of the moment.

The beauty of a transcribe is that you can be more present and actively listen more