Your doctor may have an AI assistant take notes during your next Zoom call
If you notice that your doctor doesn’t seem to be writing down anything you tell him during a Zoom video call, don’t worry. Thanks to a new deal between Zoom and Suki, the maker of AI medical assistants, there’s an AI assistant on top.
The two companies have agreed to integrate Suki’s AI note taker and administrative assistant into Zoom’s telehealth service. This means your doctor can concentrate on what you are telling him, without having to divide his attention by taking notes and possibly missing something you said.
The Suki Platform already performs similar tasks for nearly a million healthcare physicians in the US, but is typically deployed for in-person appointments. The AI (with your permission) records your conversation with the doctor and then analyzes the transcript for important details and plans for follow-up visits. After approval and notes from the doctor, the notes are added to your electronic patient file. Suki’s research shows that these types of AI-based clinical notes can reduce the time doctors spend on paperwork by up to 70%, freeing them up for more time and energy for actual care.
Zoom will expand its platform to include Suki for appointments to do the same for telehealth visits. The only difference is that the AI listens in during your Zoom call instead of from a recorder in the room with you and the doctor. That could be a big problem given Zoom’s explosive growth in healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.
“With more than 140,000 healthcare organizations worldwide using the Zoom platform, we feel a great responsibility to leverage the power of AI to drive employee productivity and improve patient experiences,” said Smita Hashim, Chief Product Officer of Zoom. “Working with Suki to bring critical AI-generated clinical note functionality to Zoom Workplace for Clinicians reduces documentation overhead for clinicians, allowing them to focus on patients.”
AI manager
Zoom’s interest in clinical AI assistance is of course not unique. For example, Microsoft recently introduced a new set of AI tools to handle administrative tasks for healthcare providers using technology acquired when it acquired Nuance. There’s also Amazon, which has brought its Bedrock-based AI tools like AWS HealthScribe to subsidiary One Medical. There are also numerous smaller companies working with Suki to provide clinical AI assistants, including Abridge and Notable.
Although that mainly plays in the background. Keep in mind that just because your doctor makes a lot of eye contact with you during your Zoom call doesn’t mean Netflix is open in another window and is ignoring you. It basically means making them pay more attention than before and getting help to remind them what you said when necessary.
“AI is changing the way we interact with the world. Everything from the way we communicate to the way we use technology and the way care is delivered will evolve. Video will be a crucial interface in the AI-driven world,” said Suki CEO Punit Soni. “We are excited to work with Zoom to develop new interaction models and AI that will advance our mission of making healthcare technology invisible and assistive so physicians can focus on what matters most: their patients.”