Nelson Advisors referenced in The Medical Republic's 'Digital Rights Activists eye GP AI Scribes' article

Nelson Advisors referenced in The Medical Republic's 'Digital Rights Activists eye GP AI Scribes' article.

Source: https://www.medicalrepublic.com.au/digital-rights-activists-eye-gp-ai-scribes/127885

Visits to a new doctor, physio or specialist often begin with: “Do you mind if I use AI?”

According to Off the Record, a new report by Digital Rights Watch, more than 40% of Australian doctors are now using AI scribes. These tools listen to consultations, feeding what they hear into Large Language Models – similar to ChatGPT or Claude – to generate medical notes.

For clinicians, AI scribes are an easy sell. They eliminate hours of paperwork, freeing energy to focus on the patient. This can profoundly change how chronically burned out doctors feel about their work. And with Medicare only compensating doctors for face-to-face time, and not note-taking, the financial and emotional incentives for practitioners are undeniable.

Yet the benefit for patients is less clear, especially when we have little transparency about who has access to deeply personal medical data, or how this data is handled by these lightly regulated AI scribes.

The TGA currently claims scribes are only medical devices if they provide diagnostic advice. This allows vendors to evade scrutiny.

The TGA’s position ignores how generative AI is used in clinical practice, and that even transcriptions can contain hallucinations or biases that could affect diagnoses. This leaves Australia’s guidance out of step with nations such as the United Kingdom.

https://www.healthcare.digital/single-post/nhs-england-issues-guidance-on-ambient-voice-technology-ensuring-safe-and-assured-adoption-of-ai-scr

Fundamentally, the government must ensure Australians’ private data is properly safeguarded, through both legislation and bodies such as the AI Safety Institute. This should include forcing AI service providers to clearly disclose what data they have access to, how they use it, and who can access it, with rigorous protections to ensure privacy and real penalties for breaches.