The advent of electronic health records was supposed to improve healthcare – all the patient info in one place, physician penmanship no longer an issue, etc. Unfortunately, some unintended consequences may have worsened the situation.
A standard doctor’s visit today includes very little eye contact between physician and patient. The doctor spends most of her time typing into the EHR. To be honest, it’s painful to see the older, one-finger-typers, struggling to input all the info into the system. And when the computer freezes, all hell breaks loose, leading to delays worse than an LA traffic jam.
Many physicians have resorted to shortcuts that require them to spend an extra hour or two every day charting the stuff they glossed over earlier in the day trying to see all their patients.
Generative AI is a promising solution in reducing this administrative burden: text to speech, inference, and the ability to distill the conversation into the right notes in the right fields in the EHR. Hopefully these tools will bring back the humanity to doctor visits. And free doctors to spend more time with their families nights and weekends.
What has your experience been?