Kaiser Permanente Colorado doctors use AI to summarize patient visits

Kaiser Permanente Colorado recently rolled out artificial intelligence software to take notes on patients’ visits — with their permission.

Dr. Brian Juan, a family medicine doctor at the health care system’s Longmont office, was part of a group that tested the software before it went live for all providers earlier this month. If patients give permission, an app on their doctor’s work phone records their conversation and summarizes it for their medical records, he said. The app, which is unnamed, doesn’t suggest diagnoses or make any decisions.

The provider needs to edit the summary before it goes into a patient’s records, but it still saves time, Juan said. But the real advantage is that he doesn’t have to take notes on a computer while the patient tells their story, he said.

“The time saved is one thing, but the quality of the interaction (with the patient) is the bigger impact,” Juan said.

Patients who use Kaiser Permanente’s online portal can see notes from their recent visits. Everyone has the right to ask that their provider fix any incorrect information in their medical records, whether introduced by a human or a computer.

The health system hasn’t revealed what it paid for the app, developed by the startup Abridge, according to Becker’s Health IT, a trade publication.

A recent poll by Ohio State University found 70% of people said they were comfortable with AI taking notes from their visits with a doctor, but the same percentage said they had concerns about how AI tools will affect their data privacy.

Tim Hwang, general counsel for Abridge, said the company retains the recordings for “a short period of time” so that providers can check the summaries against them. Abridge then deletes the recordings, and doesn’t use them to train the app or other forms of artificial intelligence, he said.