In a recent note, I commented on the emergence of "virtual scribes" (see: Virtual Scribe Vendors Remotely Generate EHR Notes and Coding). This is hospital service with physicians dictating the details of a patient office encounter. At a later time, a remote transcriptionist employed by a virtual scribe company enters the essential dictated data into the hospital EHR. These remote transcriptionists have access to the hospital EHR for this data entry. This is in contrast with the original and continuing idea of EHR scribes who are physically present in the examining room with the doctor and patient and perform all EHR keyboard entries.
However, It should not some as a surprise that the term "virtual assistant" is now taking on a new meaning and can refer to a software "assistant" rather than to a person. This new definition was explained in a longish recent article on this topic (see: Can Virtual Assistants Eliminate EHR Usability Pain Points?). Here are two quotes from it:
But dictation software is more or less a one-way street. The challenge for AI developers is to create intelligent systems with bi-directional capabilities: [the development of computerized] virtual assistants that can more or less independently perform background information-gathering work and synthesize those results into a meaningful conversation with providers.
[and]
Virtual assistants could be the answer that fed-up providers are looking for. Ideally, these tools will be able to dig through EHR data to present important nuggets of information, place phone calls and prescription orders, take notes, and help users navigate the EHR system itself. Several well-known EHR vendors, including athenahealth, Epic, and eClinicalWorks, are in the process of launching integrated virtual assistants which will be commercially available to providers in the near future. For now, however, virtual assistants are far from commonplace. The tools are predominately being used by small groups of clinicians participating in limited pilot programs as health systems test the opportunities and limitations of the strategy.
There are plenty of challenges and advantages to virtual assistants, said leaders from Yale New Haven Health, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. All three health systems are exploring whether virtual helpers can improve the provider experience and reduce physicians’ complaints about the drawbacks of EHR use. The need to address the problem of user burnout is more important than ever, leaders from the health systems stressed, but creating a tool accurate and useful enough to convince providers of its promises requires significant investment, creativity, and commitment.
Do any of the readers of this blog think that a practical and appropriate solution to our EHR complexity problem is to develop a software virtual assistant who will understand EHR idiosyncrasies and make them more user friendly? Because our EHRs are intrinsically complicated with difficult UI's, these proposed virtual assistants will also be extremely complicated and will take years to develop.
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