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Ontario family doctor says new AI notetaking saved her job

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Re: Ontario family doctor says new AI notetaking saved her job

#11
post #8
post #2

The root cause of this is that the billing system (which varies by Province) by which doctors actually get paid is a fee-for-service model. That means the system incentivizes doctors to see patients by only allowing them to get paid for actually seeing the patient: Give someone a vaccine? $15. Family doctor routine checkup? $34. The system is set up to reward the kind of doctor who sees 6 patients an hour and is on t…

The problems you point out seem valid, but are you sure they are directly relevant to the core issue this AI is solving? That skilled data entry is critical to medical operations and is very effort intensive. I feel like doctor incentivization and silicon valley's predatory corporate culture aside, this problem does need to be solved if we want to avoid wasting doctors' precious work-hours

>I feel like doctor incentivization and silicon valley's predatory corporate culture aside, this problem does need to be solved if we want to avoid wasting doctors' precious work-hours

Your comment presupposes that time spent on data entry is a waste. Relevant, cogent notes written by a human are infinitely better than whatever the rent-seeking intermediary between the physician and OpenAI shits out. The problem is not technical in nature; it's a misalignment of incentives.

The solution is to pay physicians for time they spend charting, and then the time is no longer "wasted".

Re: Ontario family doctor says new AI notetaking saved her job

#12
post #7

I talked to a therapist who hated doing notes. So I proposed a solution: Use Microsoft's "seeing AI" to describe the children playing during "play therapy". Then have a camera take a picture every few minutes, and then have chatgpt come up with the story based on the pictures and transcript of the audio, transcribed with openai whisper. Business in a nutshell!

Just need to get the parents permission for filming/photographing the children and feeding it to an AI.

Re: Ontario family doctor says new AI notetaking saved her job

#13
post #12
post #7

I talked to a therapist who hated doing notes. So I proposed a solution: Use Microsoft's "seeing AI" to describe the children playing during "play therapy". Then have a camera take a picture every few minutes, and then have chatgpt come up with the story based on the pictures and transcript of the audio, transcribed with openai whisper. Business in a nutshell!

Just need to get the parents permission for filming/photographing the children and feeding it to an AI.

not a problem if it's done locally. at least the consent is only to capture/store the images with the practice, not giving it to third-party.

Re: Ontario family doctor says new AI notetaking saved her job

#14

I just hope someone is double checking whatever notes are taken. My experience with LLM tells me they're fantastically bad at remembering and even worse at producing factual stuff that can be used without context.

No one will be double checking. On at least three occasions now I’ve had to correct monumental fuck ups in mine and my ex wife’s medical records. One nearly lead to a transfusion of an incompatible blood type.

I suspect this will lead to a decline in accountability with there being another party to blame rather than the medical professional.

The LLM did it, not me.

Re: Ontario family doctor says new AI notetaking saved her job

#15
post #12
post #7

I talked to a therapist who hated doing notes. So I proposed a solution: Use Microsoft's "seeing AI" to describe the children playing during "play therapy". Then have a camera take a picture every few minutes, and then have chatgpt come up with the story based on the pictures and transcript of the audio, transcribed with openai whisper. Business in a nutshell!

Just need to get the parents permission for filming/photographing the children and feeding it to an AI.

Just ask for it, glitter some PR over it, done. People consent into all kind of things.

Re: Ontario family doctor says new AI notetaking saved her job

#16
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in BC it's just a lack of political will because physicians are expensive, governments are broke after COVID, and so instead of fixing the system (which would cost money), the absolute morons in the health ministry have decided that "nurse practitioners" are 1:1 substitutes for family doctors, despite the fact that they don't go to medical school and thus don't receive any diagnostic training whatsoever. It'll r…

The best you can do is take care of yourself. Exercise, eat healthy, don’t do overly risky activities. It really is a shame the state we are left in BC. If it was more accessible I would go back to school to become a doctor but the MD programs are far and few between and not really structured for someone with kids. I do meet the entrance criteria for the UBC med program but Im not going to uproot my family back to Va…

Don't do it. I'm married to a doctor who started in family medicine and bailed out because the work-life balance was awful and the money was mediocre, but she wasn't willing to see 6 patients an hour.

Re: Ontario family doctor says new AI notetaking saved her job

#17

I just hope someone is double checking whatever notes are taken. My experience with LLM tells me they're fantastically bad at remembering and even worse at producing factual stuff that can be used without context.

Depends on the system I guess, but I'm familiar with a local one which is very much tuned for just summarising/rewriting. It seems very good at what it's doing and since it's working from the transcripts, it's actually picking up some things the doctors were not concentrating on because it wasn't the main issue. I've never seen doctors so keen to adopt a new tech before.

Re: Ontario family doctor says new AI notetaking saved her job

#18

I just hope someone is double checking whatever notes are taken. My experience with LLM tells me they're fantastically bad at remembering and even worse at producing factual stuff that can be used without context.

To ber very frank, a lot of these logging and note taking requirements have already led to many mistakes, and we already have many case studies of how the system does not care to remedy such things. I can easily see how AI will be adopted here and its mistakes will be glossed over the same way we already glossed over the same mistakes before.

Re: Ontario family doctor says new AI notetaking saved her job

#19
post #14

I just hope someone is double checking whatever notes are taken. My experience with LLM tells me they're fantastically bad at remembering and even worse at producing factual stuff that can be used without context.

No one will be double checking. On at least three occasions now I’ve had to correct monumental fuck ups in mine and my ex wife’s medical records. One nearly lead to a transfusion of an incompatible blood type. I suspect this will lead to a decline in accountability with there being another party to blame rather than the medical professional. The LLM did it, not me.

> No one will be double checking.

Yeah no, I can tell you from experience with a clinic that things are checked. Let's talk about the real issues and how to enforce double-checking for people who would ignore it. Hyperboly like that is not helpful.

But, I wonder if those systems should randomly insert obvious markers to help here. "This has not been read." "Doctor was asleep at the wheel." "Derp derp derp." - like the fake gun images that the airport security has to mark.

Re: Ontario family doctor says new AI notetaking saved her job

#20
post #14

I just hope someone is double checking whatever notes are taken. My experience with LLM tells me they're fantastically bad at remembering and even worse at producing factual stuff that can be used without context.

No one will be double checking. On at least three occasions now I’ve had to correct monumental fuck ups in mine and my ex wife’s medical records. One nearly lead to a transfusion of an incompatible blood type. I suspect this will lead to a decline in accountability with there being another party to blame rather than the medical professional. The LLM did it, not me.

Alluding to FAFO, a computer cannot find out, so a computer shouldn’t fuck around.

I’m hoping for a lot of legal precedent showing that an AI cannot be blamed, especially in a medical context.

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