Ben Condon: Heidi NZ Clinical Director on the AI health scribe to be rolled out across emergency departments and GPs

Doctors in Health New Zealand's emergency departments could soon be saving precious time with the roll out of a helpful AI tool. 

AI technology Heidi creates a written transcript of doctors' consultations and makes a medical note. 

Country-wide trials show clinicians could see an extra patient per shift, while bringing down average documentation time from around 17 minutes to just over four per patient. 

Heidi New Zealand Clinical Director Ben Condon told Mike Hosking the AI not only creates a written transcript, but can also use templates to create medical notes, discharge summaries, and referral letters, among other things.  

He says doctors will still be responsible for reviewing the notes and letters for accuracy, but time will be saved by having them ready to review in real time. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
AI is arriving at your ED department. We've got a
new AI scribe from Heidi Health that's been rolled out
in nationwide, so pilots and Hawks Bay saw clinicians see
one extra patient per shift, they save seventeen minutes on average,
and they cut down ADMIN work by eighty one percent.
Now being condent, Doctor bin Content is a clinical director
at Heidi Health and as.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Well us been morning, morning, mine, thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Not at all is Heidi Health's just one of a
number of AI tools out there if you're looking for
AI tools.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
There are certainly a number of scribes out in the market,
but yeah, where one of them and growing quickly, which
is really exciting.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
So the magic is the magic At eighty one percent
cut and admin, is that as good as it gets?
Or might you cut edmin out completely and you just
talk and AI does it all for you.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
At the moment, that's pretty good. We're hoping to improve
it slightly with a broader rollout, but certainly in time
we're hopeful that we can remove admin completely from doctor's
day and just allow them to focus on treating their patents.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
And just to be clear, seeing a lot of people
don't quite get the head around AI at the moment.
That's what I get at the doctor when I go
to the GP, they're just talking. It's all being transcribed,
and then two minutes later you get a complete print
out of what you've just discussed.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
As that is that's correct. So creating a written transcript
and then using some templates that your doctor can set up,
it can create not just a medical note, but also
you discharge summary, you refer a letter and any other
note that you need at the click of a button.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
What are the legals around it in terms of if
something goes wrong I said this, No you didn't, Yes,
I did, and there it is. You know, are you
one hundred percent certain that what has taken down and
transcribed through AI is accurate.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
It's really important for everyone to know that the doctor
is still responsible for the note, So the time saving
comes from them having a note ready to review in
real time. What happens at the moment is doctors often
save all they're note taking until the end of a
clinical end of a shift, so they're making a note
hours later, which can also be fought with errors. So
really we're hoping that they're able to save as much time,

(01:59):
But still can have confidence in the accuracy of the
document because they're reviewing it in real time.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Are you health specific? In other words, why wouldn't the
cops roll us out when they're interviewing somebody.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
So Heidi is trained on clinical language, so any kind
of person with a clinical background, not just doctors, but nurses, physios.
We've had vets use us as well. They can use Heidi,
but certainly we have non clinical people using it for
things like taking meeting minutes as well.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
What's your take on this as a thing in changing
the world and changing our lives. Are you sort of
fully bullish on AI and this is transformational or we're
still discovering what it will be.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
I'm really bullish, particularly in this use case. I think
we've seen across the world doctors, nurses being burnt out,
working harder than ever before. But as our populations get
older and more sick, So any relief we can give
our clinical staff and make their work a little bit easier,
but also give them more time to do what they

(03:01):
want to do, which is see and treat patients, I
think is going to be a real game changer for
the health system.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
Good stuff. We appreciate it. Very much, doctor Bincondon, who's
a clinical director at Hardy Health.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
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