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Comment by wuj | Hacker News Reader

One point I resonated with is the high administrative overhead of being a doctor. I can imagine the stress of using an outdated EMR system when the time you have for each patient is so limited. I see lots of AI companies are trying to transform the MedTech industry, but I'm unsure how much of their products useful / are actually adopted by the hospitals. Maybe some experts in that space can enlighten me on that?

I also agree that running hospitals like a private business is at odds with the essence of healthcare. However, this trend might be more indicative of a broader societal shift rather than a phenomenon unique to this sector.

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One of my old registrars co-founded this company: https://tortus.ai. They are doing a trial at Great Ormond Street at the moment - I haven't tried what they're building but it's an AI assistant that reduces some of the admin burden.

I am really hopeful that systems like this will take off – the reality of being a junior doctor in the UK is that most of your time will be used on quite tedious admin tasks (documenting every patient interaction, filling forms, booking clinics etc.) using very & slow outdated computer systems. I don't think anyone expects this when they apply to medical school, and it can be quite demoralising when you start your first job.

> I see lots of AI companies are trying to transform the MedTech industry, but I'm unsure how much of their products useful / are actually adopted by the hospitals. Maybe some experts in that space can enlighten me on that?

My impression (as an outsider with a partner in the medical field) is that the prime function of the "medical industry" is to generate reams and reams of documentation about "care provided" to an insanely granular level. Functionally, this information is mostly bullshit that is irrelevant to providing medical care, but it serves a very important purpose for the medical administrative class so that they can bill the patient for each bandage applied or Ibuprofen administered.

AI MedTech companies mostly seem primed to increase this firehose of bullshit. Whether or not that will take the pressure off front-line medical personnel who are currently tasked with generating it remains to be seen, but you'd be hard pressed to convince me.

There are a few other reasons - doctors document every interaction partly for medico-legal reasons – just in case something happens. The notes become especially long and defensive in any situations that have a possibility of being misinterpreted. If it's not written down, it didn't happen. It's obviously also a record for other clinicians / healthcare professionals to read through and see what happened during the admission.

But yep I do worry about any kind of generative AI in this context.

Even before AI tools started becoming available, some provider organizations hired human medical scribes (documentation assistants) to do EHR data entry so that highly paid physicians could focus on patient care.

https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/sustainability/...

AI can partially automate the scribe jobs to deliver a minor productivity boost or cost savings. But the near-term prospects for using AI to automate care delivery look pretty dim.

> the stress of using an outdated EMR system

Using an outdated EMR system is hardly a cause of stress. A more usual cause of stress is being forced to use a brand new (and unusable) EMR.

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