Electronic Health Records and AI, Lower Bank Reserve Requirements, European Defense Spending
Electronic Health Records and Efficiency
Most people accept that paper health records are suboptimal. The information recorded was haphazard, the paper stacks could be misplaced and their accuracy was questionable.
The introduction of Electronic Health Records (EHR) was supposed to solve those problems. They came with one significant drawback. The time required to fill in an electronic form accurately greatly exceeds that of making paper entries.
The EHR has increased the administrative burden on doctors. That is both contributing to burnout and reducing the number of patients that can be seen in a day.
This created an opening for a new kind of position. Medical scribes work with doctors and fill in the EHR during the patient interview. This allows for more patients to be seen so the cost is acceptable for many providers.
My daughter is taking her final exam today before beginning part time work as a scribe. She took 20 hours of training and will need several weeks of on-the-job shadowing to perform to the standards required of the role.
As I understand it, the majority of scribes are aspiring medical students seeking clinical experience to boost their medical school applications.
I asked a cardiologist friend whether AI was about to remove the need for scribes. He was dismissive because every program he has tried was inaccurate and required significant rewriting.
That did not stop Abridge from raising $300 million on a $5.3 billion valuation. That’s up from its initial $250 million three months ago at a $2.75 billion valuation. Almost doubling in value in three months is frothy by any measure.
This article from the National Institutes of Health argues that doctors would be better served devoting their time to training AI, so that it could enhance their learnings from direct patient interaction rather than offloading data entry to scribes.
That is likely the primary sales pitch for companies like Abridge which are seeking to break into the market. According to growjo, the total addressable market is the $3.7 billion revenue of scribe companies. Abridge’s valuation already exceeds that which prices in significant growth for the business and no reduction in costs for customers.
Semi-skilled administrative tasks are annoying and unavoidable. They have to be done correctly because they are the basis on which higher order tasks rest.
I think it is important to point out. Medical scribes are not unpaid interns. They have a significant role to play in recording patient testimony and there is no room for hallucinations.
The allure of using AI to conduct this kind of job is obvious. It will be a significant measure of success if it can be done effectively. Nvidia continues to perform well as companies compete to dominate the sector by building more data centres.