Joel Freiberg, the founder of Australian tech start-up Medow Health, was inspired to develop a medically specific AI scribe after watching his father, a respiratory physician, stay late at work completing paperwork.

Currently, Medow Health’s user base is increasing by 50 per cent every month, as word spreads in the medical profession of AI’s possibilities.

Freiberg said clinics commonly had months-long wait lists for patient consultations and his AI tool would help reduce those wait times.

“Doctors are spending 30 per cent of their time on data entry … if you cut that in half you can see three to four more patients a day and cut those wait times,” he said.

“We all sit in the doctor’s office waiting for an hour, many times they’re doing their reporting ’cause they don’t want to forget what they said.”

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Freiberg’s AI is currently only used in private clinics, but the developer wants to take the technology into the public system, and believes it could reduce Victoria’s backlogged elective surgery wait list.

In June, 58,722 Victorians were on the waiting list for planned surgery, according to the Victorian Agency for Health Information, and the real figure is larger, as many patients were waiting for an initial consultation.

While advocates are not suggesting the technology replaces a real-person consultation, some in the health system urge caution with how widely AI is used.

“There’s very little research evidence around these scribes,” said Farah Magrabi, a professor of biomedical and health informatics at Macquarie University.

“There are issues where the scribe could be basically summarising it incorrectly.

“This AI has the potential to really solve a lot of problems for doctors, and other health professionals as well, who are burdened by documentation, but they need to clearly understand how it’s working.”

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners in July released advice on AI scribes, and noted the potential benefits, such as reducing administrative burden, improving patient satisfaction and decreasing doctor burnout.

But the potential for errors in scribes and the risks of a data breach that would expose sensitive medical information are among the drawbacks. Also, there is limited data on how well the scribes work.

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The Australian Medical Association’s guidelines on AI support the use of the technology only when there is appropriate ethical oversight and where it is “used to benefit patients’ health and wellbeing”. The association has also raised concerns about a patient’s rights and a doctor’s clinical independence.

Dr Michael Bonning, the association’s chair of public health, said AI that accelerated administration work could reduce surgery wait times, but “we still need more of these doctors available to our system ... and [to] fund our health system effectively”.

More immediately, Bonning said, the value lies in reducing doctor fatigue and staff turnover.

“The level of burnout we are seeing is significant, [AI] does something about that,” he said. “I think about it as being transformative … we are at a time where the demands on the system are overwhelming.”

Everything considered, Bonning is hopeful AI could make a big difference.

“I believe in the value of technology being rolled out … and to ensure it meets all of those practical and ethical standards and recognise this can make our lives easier,” he said.

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