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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

#41

Post by Angostura »

monocultured wrote: post #30

Just the other day there were news about how many mistakes the AI-assisted journaling caused – wrong names, wrong diagnoses, typos (buksmärta -> kuksmärta which is hilarious but serious). Some of it is surely teething problems, but unless there is a robust check upon implementation it might just add another layer of inefficient new public management make-work to the system. https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/ai-journal…

It feels to me like an autopilot problem in the making. "This thing means that you don't have to keep your eyes on the road - but please ensure you keep your eyes on the road, in case of errors"

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

#42

Post by viraptor »

cjk2 wrote: post #28
viraptor wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

You are really naive if you think checking anything is universally done to any standard anywhere on the planet. And writing it off as hyperbole is dismissive. I’ve literally been in a meeting with a doctor in the last week who wrote something down wrong on the damn computer in front of me. And I’m talking a specialist consultant. I’m sure if I didn’t mention it that the incorrect data would be checked over and over a…

You're oversimplifying this. So I'm not a doctor, but close enough to this system. First, you've definitely got professions/situations where checking is done. See flight and surgery checklists. Of course there will be mistakes and we'll never reach 100% compliance, but that's a given.

But then, there are secondary effects like how much time will your doctor have and how ready they are. In practice the notes take time. If you're unlucky, you're going to be late, on a busy day, and your notes will be done many hours later from recollection. In that case, even an imperfect system can increase the overall quality if it enables faster turnaround. I know of cases where the automatic notes generation did catch issues which the doctor simply forgot about.

The individual stories are brutal, but overall they say very little - was that the only mistake that doctor made in their life, or are they making 10 a day? In general we have to accept mistakes happen and build a system that catches them or minimises the impact.

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

#43

Post by moffkalast »

wernsey wrote: post #36
r0ckarong wrote: post #5

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.

Agreed, but now the doctor has to do her job and the AI's job. Cory Doctorow wrote about it a while back. I think it was this article "Humans are not perfectly vigilant" [0]. It explains how technology is supposed to help humans be better at their jobs, but instead we're heading in a direction where AIs are doing the work but humans have to stand beside them to double check them. [0] https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/0…

For what it's worth, the tech will only improve over time and looking at the birth rates, humans will only become more and more overworked and less reliable as the years go by. There should be a point where it just makes sense to switch even if it still makes mistakes.

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

#45

Post by viraptor »

arinazari wrote: post #25
viraptor wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which one? And what sorts of things is it picking up on?

https://www.lyrebirdhealth.com/ and I know of at least one case where the patient mentioned something relevant, but not connected to the main issue they were talking about. The doctor missed it because it wasn't the main topic, but the transcript and the notes included it.

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

#46

Post by kitd »

awinter-py wrote: post #26

> Lall said it takes minutes for AI Scribe to collate the information, allowing her to move on to other patients while the SOAP note is being created in the background. it takes minutes ...

... which, from TFA, adds up to 19 hours (ie >2 extra working days) per week, time that could be (and is) spent seeing other patients.

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

#47

Post by eru »

viraptor wrote: post #29
eru wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies and people should have liability, but mere tools like AIs should not. How would that even work?

I'm the simplest way - if you allow AI to make decisions, you're responsible. Like this https://bc.ctvnews.ca/air-canada-s-chatbot-gave-a-b-c-man-th... So far we're doing pretty good with that idea globally (I've not seen any case going the other way in court)

I mean how would it work, if you tried to hold the AI liable?

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

#48

Post by boxed »

nvy wrote: post #4
boxed wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The situation is the same in Sweden. New Public Management is a disaster all around.

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…

> governments are broke

That's just what they tell voters in order to get away with cutting the thing government exists to provide in the first place, all to lower taxes for some weird political-religious ideals.

If the government can't basics like health care, that government has no reason to exist.

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

#49

Post by kohbo »

Angostura wrote: post #41
monocultured wrote: post #30

Just the other day there were news about how many mistakes the AI-assisted journaling caused – wrong names, wrong diagnoses, typos (buksmärta -> kuksmärta which is hilarious but serious). Some of it is surely teething problems, but unless there is a robust check upon implementation it might just add another layer of inefficient new public management make-work to the system. https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/ai-journal…

It feels to me like an autopilot problem in the making. "This thing means that you don't have to keep your eyes on the road - but please ensure you keep your eyes on the road, in case of errors"

I found it interesting that your mind went to Tesla's autopilot. My mind went to operating airplanes. Most newer small planes have some form of GPS but you're technically not supposed to use instrument navigation until your certified to do so. I haven't met a single pilot that didn't do so, though.

Anyway, it creates the very problem you mentioned but just replace "road" with "outside the cockpit".

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

#50

Post by kohbo »

nvy wrote: post #4
boxed wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The situation is the same in Sweden. New Public Management is a disaster all around.

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…

Not saying your overall message is wrong about your region but... My wife is an NP and most of her courses and clinical time were focused on diagnostic techniques.
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