epocrates

Can Amazon Web Services' HealthScribe help to alleviate physician burnout?

October 5, 2023

What is it?

In July, Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) announced their new artificial intelligence (AI) service, AWS HealthScribe. The HIPAA-eligible service is designed to enable health care software providers to build clinical applications that use speech recognition and AI, thereby generating clinical documentation and saving clinicians time. (AWS, 2023)

How does it benefit health care providers and patients?

One of the most frequently cited reasons for physician burnout is the growing burden of administrative tasks related to electronic health records (EHRs). AWS HealthScribe and other major tech corporations, including Microsoft and Google, are turning to generative AI as a primary approach to tackle clinician burnout. (Chou, 2023)

The process of compiling clinical documentation after every patient-clinician discussion is of vital importance for compliance, quality measures, and reimbursement, but the task is time-intensive and takes clinicians away from seeing patients. (Chou, 2023; Amazon, 2023) Generative AI has the potential to reduce these administrative tasks, enabling clinicians to focus more on patient care.

How does it work?

Amazon says that AWS HealthScribe, which currently supports general medicine and orthopedics, can be integrated into clinical applications, allowing health care providers to leverage built-in speech-to-text capabilities and create conversation transcripts. The application uses natural language processing and generative AI capabilities to extract structured medical terms, such as medical conditions and medications, and generate discussion-based notes that include relevant details that a clinician can review and finalize in their EHR. Every sentence used in the AI-generated clinical notes comes with references to the original doctor-patient conversation transcripts, which means clinicians can easily view the historical context of notes for greater accuracy and transparency. (Amazon, 2023)

Importantly, Amazon notes in its developer guide that the results produced are probabilistic and may not always be accurate due to various factors, including audio quality, background noise, speaker clarity, the complexity of medical terminology, and context-specific language nuances. The company also stresses that the system is designed to be used in an assistive role rather than as a substitute for clinical expertise. (AWS HealthScribe developer guide, 2023).

What concerns does AI in health care present?

AI-powered services like AWS HealthScribe have the potential to transform how clinicians use their time, but organizations like the American Medical Association (AMA) urge caution. At its annual meeting earlier this year, AMA announced plans to formulate principles and recommendations addressing the benefits and pitfalls of generative AI in health care. Besides creating recommendations, the AMA also intends to collaborate with the federal government and other relevant organizations to discuss privacy, data protection, and accuracy. (AMA, 2023; Chou, 2023)

Who is using the system?

AWS says that three companies are already using AWS HealthScribe to power their clinical applications:

• 3M Health Information Systems (3M HIS) is using AWS HealthScribe as a core component of its clinician applications to help expedite and scale the delivery of its ambient clinical documentation and virtual assistant solutions;
• Babylon, an integrated digital-first primary care service that manages population health at scale, is integrating the generative AI capabilities into its natural language processing solutions; and
• ScribeEMR, a provider of virtual medical scribing, virtual medical coding and office services, will use the system to capture and interpret patient visits more effectively and optimize EMR workflows, coding, and reimbursement processes. (Amazon, 2023)

Sources:

(2023, Jul 26). Amazon. AWS announces AWS HealthScribe, a new generative AI-powered service that automatically creates clinical documentation. https://press.aboutamazon.com/2023/7/aws-announces-aws-healthscribe-a-new-generative-ai-powered-service-that-automatically-creates-clinical-documentation

(Accessed 2023, Oct 4). Amazon. AWS HealthScribe developer guide. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/transcribe/latest/dg/health-scribe.html

(2023, Jun 13). American Medical Association. AMA to develop recommendations for augmented intelligence. https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-develop-recommendations-augmented-intelligence

Chou, D. (2023, Aug 2). Forbes. How generative AI can help with physician burnout. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidchou/2023/08/02/big-techs-new-weapon-against-physician-burnout-generative-ai/?sh= 165d17641f7b