One of the challenges posed by EHRs such as Epic is that their user interfaces (UIs) are clunky which is to say awkward and tedious. This is a problem for physicians who must input patient notes by keyboard, turning them into the most highly trained and costly data clerks in healthcare. Austin Regional Clinic has come up with a solution to this problem which was described in a recent article (see: Apple Watches, AI help docs dictate at Austin Regional, saving 2 hours a day). Below is an excerpt from it:
Austin Regional had been searching for a solution that could help reduce the [EHR data entry] clerical burden on physicians, introduce efficiencies into their interactions with the EHR, and allow them to focus more on patients....Austin Regional turned to vendor Notable Health for the solution to its challenge. Notable Health’s technology leverages an Apple Watch to document physician-patient discussions and uses speech recognition, AI, machine learning and natural language processing to parse the conversation down to its relevant pieces and accurately record them directly into the patient’s electronic record....The note is created using a combination of artificial intelligence and human quality checks. The physician reviews and signs the note in the EHR. The technology is able to incorporate certain types of templates for documentation for standardization and ease of use. Further, the technology is able to integrate with the group practice’s Epic EHR to reduce the manual work associated with order entry, service codes and routine visits.
EHRs have been described as one of the major burnout factors for physicians (see: Study: EHRs Contribute to Family Physician Stress, Burnout) because of their UIs and other design issues. Well documented is the number of mouse clicks and key strokes that are required to enter necessary information about a patient (see: 62 clicks to order Tylenol? What happens when EHR tweaks go bad). Dictating patient notes into the EHR without additional computer support would make physician input more efficient but could result in critical errors (see: VOICE RECOGNITION AND THE ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORD). As I understand the Notable Health technology described above, it uses speech recognition, AI, machine learning and NLP to facilitate the process and ensure accurate physician notes. The reference above mentions the following competitors to Notable Health for EHR dictated inputs: Nuance Dragon Medical One, Fusion SpeechEMR, M*Modal, NuScribe, Radekal, VoiceboxMD and ZyDoc. I must admit that I was very impressed by the idea of using an Apple Watch to enable a physician to dictate patient notes into the Epic EHR (see: How To Use Dictation on Apple Watch). It's an ideal physician dictation device -- always available and literally at-hand.
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