MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — WVU Medicine has announced plans to integrate an artificial intelligence program called Abridge into the doctor-patient relationship.
The AI program records patient interactions and creates a detailed summary of the visit for the patient’s medical records. The recording is optional, and the records are purged regularly to protect patient privacy, according to the chief medical information officer with WVU Medicine Dr. David Rich.
“It’s capturing the narrative, and we know that in this age of patients having relatively full access to their medical records and notes—they can read those notes and hopefully understand what the process was,” Rich said.
During an in-office visit, the program is recording the interaction while the caregiver interacts with the patient. The AI program is working in the background compiling the conversation to be reviewed and ultimately included in the medical record.
“Take that recording and then the AI behind the product will translate that into the classic note about that visit,” Rich said. “So, it helps us expedite the documentation related to the encounters we have with patients.”
Now, the doctor can focus more on the doctor-patient relationship and the reason for the visit. Dr. Rich said the notes taken by a human are no less accurate, but the AI-taken notes are sometimes more comprehensive.
“If I have some difficult questions about what to do with the patient, I have more time to focus on those questions than to simply recount, type, dictate, or use some other tool to document what I just gathered from the patient,” Rich said.
For now, the system is being used in treatment rooms, but it has the potential to be used in any setting where there are important conversations relating to patient care. The program is now available for use by any unit within the WVU Medicine system.
“We have an agreement across the enterprise so that any doctor, nurse practitioner, or physician assistant working within the organization can use this functionality for their visits,” Dr. Rich said.
Experts believe the technology will continue to evolve and could be deployed into other areas of hospital operations. Other AI models are being developed to assist with drug discovery and development as well as predictive and preventive diagnostics.
“There’s certainly a lot of potential,” Rich said. “Anywhere there is conversation or dialog that can be captured and translated into documentation, that’s a win for all because it’s less manual effort.”