For months, dozens of family doctors across the University of Vermont Health Network have been using an artificial intelligence tool to help with writing notes. It’s a time-intensive process that takes hours each day and can lead to burnout.
Now, the health network is offering the software, called Abridge, to all of its primary care doctors, following similar moves to use AI scribes at other health care practices across the country.
For some of the 50 doctors who used the software in a two-month pilot program earlier this year, it’s been a big help.
“It transformed the practice for me overnight,” said Dr. Catherine Naden, a primary care and sports medicine doctor in Waterbury. “And I don’t really like technology.”
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Naden said it’s taken away some of the stress of multitasking during a patient visit.
“You’re not sitting there typing away madly as they say everything,” she said. “I found it was very mentally liberating to be able to focus on the patient, what they were saying, and the medical decision making and orders that needed to be entered.”
Patients consent before clinicians use the software. It records audio from a visit using a phone app, then writes a draft of a note that clinicians edit before submitting to an electronic health record. In Abridge’s privacy policy, they say they never sell personal data, they de-identify health data before it’s used in research and development, and they apply federal privacy rules to all the personal data they collect.
A UVM Health Network spokesperson said they are not allowed to share the cost of the software, based on their contract with Abridge. But Dr. Justin Stinnett-Donnelly, a hospitalist and technology leader at UVM Health Network who helped oversee the pilot program, said the benefit has been so compelling, it was an easy decision to make.
Based on survey data from the pilot program, without the software, doctors estimated that they spent a total of five hours a day writing notes, both during and after work, for a full day of seeing patients. When using the software, that dropped to two hours a day, according to Stinnett-Donnelly.
“It's the first time that I have really gotten, in my role as an informaticist, unsolicited emails thanking me and thanking the organization for bringing this to people because it has truly helped them,” he said.
The hospital network plans to expand the tool to specialists like cardiologists and endocrinologists in the coming months.
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