Justine Thorpe: Co-chair of Health Accelerator discusses use of AI in GP practices

Four of the country's largest primary health organisations are pooling their resources together in an effort to deliver more digital solutions. 

More than 500 general practices, supporting over two million patients fall under the umbrella of Pegasus, Pinnacle, Procare and Tu Ora Compass Health. 

Justine Thorpe is the Co-chair of the new innovation hub, Health Accelerator. 

She told Mike Hosking that the next thing they'll be looking at is AI scribe tools for GPs. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
New plan for you from four of the country's largest
primary healthcare organizations. Health Accelerator is what they're calling it,
focuses on fast tracking users AI. It's the future. Justin
Thorne is thought rather as the coach here of the
Health Accelerator and is with us justin good morning, Good
morning mate. So four groups, five hundred practices, two million patients,
So you've got a lot of people involved in all

(00:21):
of this. Essentially from my reading, it's AI. It handles
the admin. Will I notice anything as a patient?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yes, hopefully you will. Hopefully you'll notice quicker care and
also that your general practitioner is focusing more on you
rather than typing notes into their computer and doing all
their admin work while they're trying to have an appointment
with you.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
So my wife was on the phone to somebody the
other day. After the half hour chat, she got within
three minutes a complete replication of what they just talked
about via email. So that's the sort of thing you're talking.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
About, right, Well, we're talking about a range of things.
So when we talk about a notes from a consultation
that will go into the patient's consultation record, and as
they have a patient portal, they'll be able to see
those notes quite quickly and see that they're very thorough
and a lot better than maybe just a GP sitting

(01:20):
there quickly typing them, and they'll come through a lot quicker.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Wow. How soon are we going to have an AI generated.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Script, an AI generated prescription? Yeah, well, I think already now.
It happens quite quickly when your doctor orders one. I
think it's really important to remember that we want to
make sure that a general practitioner or a nurse practitioner
is overseeing the prescribing of medication. So already now they

(01:48):
can develop a script and send it to your pharmacy
or chosen pharmacy, and it can be there within minutes.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
The robots that I was reading about this morning that
they support Cardia bascuel disease risk assessment. When we say robot,
what's the robot look like?

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Well, it's certainly not a robots in a computer. They
are programmed code in the background of the patient management system.
And what that does is it scrolls through the background
of the system and can pick up your readings like
your blood pressure or your weight or height, and it
can automatically generate a caveer vascular risk assessment for you

(02:30):
and if you are high risk, it can prompt the
GP to make contact with you so they can have
a conversation.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Interesting who pays for all of this the practice?

Speaker 2 (02:40):
So there will be licensing for the practices. So because
we do it at scale, we're able to offer that
at quite a nominal rate.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Good on you. It's a fast and changing world, Justine,
I wish you the best with the Justin Thorpe's the
Coach Here of Health accelerated those four groups by the way,
a Pinnacle, Pegas's pro Care and to all a Compass.
So with a couple of million patients, you'll really knowledge
the name. For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen
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