Now, Amazon's AI converts patient-doctor conversation into medical record
For years, doctors have been treating patients by spending time with them and then detailing their condition in their medical records. The process requires them to manually enter the problems into a database or hire costly human scribes. However, the good news is, Amazon is now simplifying this process with a new AI-powered voice transcription technology. Here's all about it.
Amazon Transcribe Medical for real-time speech recognition
While Google and Microsoft also offer voice-to-text speech recognition/transcription tools, Amazon's tool, dubbed 'Amazon Transcribe Medical', has been specifically designed for the healthcare field. It uses deep learning to automatically transcribe the interaction between a doctor and patient in real-time and plug the useful information from it into the patient's medical record, thereby saving both the time and resources of the doctor.
Goal to free up doctors for patient care
The AI-powered tool, unveiled at Amazon Web Services' re:Invent conference, has been designed with the sole purpose of freeing up doctors for patient care. "Our overarching goal is to free up the doctor, so they have more attention going to where it should be directed," Matt Wood, AWS VP of AI, told CNBC. "And that's to the patient."
US physicians spend around 6 hours/day filling up medical records
According to a study from the University of Wisconsin and the American Medical Association, primary care physicians in the US spend around 6 hours/day filling up medical reports in electronic health record systems. Now, this tool can finally cut down this time.
Plus, it even understands the medical language
Amazon claims that the transcription tool captures conversations and adds them to medical records with an incredible level of accuracy. It added that the tool, which can be integrated using an API, understands the medical language and doesn't even require the doctor to call out commas and periods. In essence, the doctors just have to interact and the system takes care of everything.
Transcribe Medical works with Amazon Comprehend Medical
The medical records generated by the tool can be easily fed into an electronic health record system, which has now become a standard in the US. Plus, the generated data can also be plugged into Comprehend Medical, an Amazon tool that can scan unstructured medical reports to extract "information such as patient diagnosis, treatments, dosages, symptoms, and signs, and more."
Still, Amazon faces a daunting challenge
While Transcribe Medical is now available in select US regions, Amazon still faces daunting privacy concerns. The tool is compliant with the US Government's Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), but given its recent data mishaps, the company would have to convince both doctors and patients to use it. It would have to be fully transparent about data collection, use, and accessibility.
