I have talked about it here a couple times before but my last couple doctors have generally spent more time typing than talking to me. They've become more stenographer than physician. I have lamented how the need for record keeping has seemingly interfered with actual … listening and empathy. They're just typing away on the computer, and I have even had one Google my symptoms and pull up WebMD.
The new piece to this story and in stark contrast - my wife and I recently had a child and our pediatrician is genuinely fantastic. Friendly, helpful, and actively listens to our concerns. It frankly gives me hope that such physician-ing is still possible in today's system.
I don't know what it's going to take to get us back to a reasonable place, but I am frankly kind of hopeful for like some sort of AI note taker so that the doctor could be the human in the room again.
AI scribes is one of the few good uses of LLMs I'm seeing in the healthcare space currently. My doctor loves it, and have to agree the one he's using does a great job of transcribing and summarising.
And the one we're offering in my company is getting a lot of love from doctors for very similar reasons, and how much time it saves them.
The need for record keeping isn't what has interfered with listening and empathy.
Courts manage to have record keeping without the judge typing constantly.
It just takes money. Either hiring someone to type for the doctor or paying the doctor enough that they can spend non-patient time typing up record keeping notes.
In practice, just like with air lines, people's revealed preference is for low cost over great service.
> I don't know what it's going to take to get us back to a reasonable place, but I am frankly kind of hopeful for like some sort of AI note taker so that the doctor could be the human in the room again
Doctolib (premier healthcare startup in France, expanding into Italy and Germany, the vast majority of healthcare appointments happen via them) have an AI scribe project in public beta which seems to be working very well.
The new piece to this story and in stark contrast - my wife and I recently had a child and our pediatrician is genuinely fantastic. Friendly, helpful, and actively listens to our concerns. It frankly gives me hope that such physician-ing is still possible in today's system.
I don't know what it's going to take to get us back to a reasonable place, but I am frankly kind of hopeful for like some sort of AI note taker so that the doctor could be the human in the room again.