Healthcare Dive: The promise of AI in clinical medicine

The following is an excerpt from Healthcare Dive's interview with Dr. Gregg Miller, Chief Medical Officer of Vituity, leading performance-improvement programs and best practices across clinical specialties. You can find the full interview on the Healthcare Dive website here.

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Documentation is a major time drain in clinical practice, making AI-powered ambient scribing an appealing solution. These tools listen to patient-clinician conversations and generate notes, potentially reducing screen time and improving patient interactions.

However, studies show mixed results:

• A Family Practice paper found ambient scribing reduced documentation time by nearly two minutes per encounter.
• A New England Journal of Medicine study, however, showed minimal impact on overall workload.
• Some research even suggests that these tools increase clinician time spent in electronic health records.

In my experience, ambient scribing helps with straightforward cases like minor injuries or routine complaints, where the patient can provide most of the necessary information. By off-loading note-taking, I can maintain better patient engagement.

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However, the limitations become apparent in complex cases. In the ED, I must sometimes gather input from multiple sources—patients, paramedics, family members, medical records—over several hours. AI scribing doesn’t effectively synthesize this information, and most platforms can’t help me generate medical decision-making notes, which are essential for accurate documentation and reimbursement.

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One promising advancement is Sayvant, an AI scribing tool developed by Vituity’s Inflect innovation hub. Unlike first-generation AI scribes, Sayvant helps clinicians draft medical decision-making content, making end-of-shift documentation far less burdensome.

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