AWS Introduces Cutting-Edge Generative AI Tool for Streamlining Doctor’s Paperwork

Amazon Web Services unveiled a groundbreaking service for health-care software providers called AWS HealthScribe. This service incorporates generative artificial intelligence and speech recognition to automatically generate clinical documentation for health-care workers.

The goal of AWS HealthScribe is to save time for health-care workers by offering AI-generated transcripts and summaries of patient visits, which can be directly entered into electronic health record systems. Additionally, the service is capable of extracting important medical terms, medications, and other key details. Physicians have the ability to review and verify each line of generated text with the original transcript.

Clinical documentation is a major challenge for doctors and nurses. According to a study funded by the American Medical Association in 2016, physicians spend twice as much time on administrative work as they do with patients. They also typically spend one to two extra hours on clerical tasks outside of regular working hours, often referred to as “pajama time.”

To address this issue, companies like Microsoft’s Nuance Communications and AWS have been working on solutions to alleviate the administrative burden.

“Generative AI has the potential to revolutionize the health-care and life sciences industry in numerous ways,” said Swami Sivasubramanian, Vice President of Database, Analytics, and Machine-Learning Services at AWS, during a keynote speech at AWS Summit New York.

In March, Microsoft’s Nuance introduced DAX Express, a generative clinical notes application. Similar to AWS HealthScribe, DAX Express automatically generates a draft of a clinical note within seconds after a patient visit. It captures real-time conversations between doctors and patients and utilizes existing AI and OpenAI’s latest model, GPT-4, to create notes.

Physicians have the ability to review the AI-generated notes before adding them to electronic health record systems.

AWS HealthScribe relies on Amazon Bedrock, AWS’s platform for developing generative AI applications. The company confirmed that the service is HIPAA-compliant and does not retain any customer information. Customers also have the flexibility to choose their preferred storage location for clinical documentation.

Pricing for AWS HealthScribe is based on a pay-as-you-go model, with charges calculated according to the amount of audio processed per month, as stated in a blog post by the company.

AWS has already garnered interest from various organizations using HealthScribe, including software company 3M Health Information Systems. 3M’s Vice President of Global R&D, Detlef Koll, expressed satisfaction with the technology and emphasized that it does not serve as decision support or alter patient care.

According to an AWS company release, initial applications for AWS HealthScribe focus on general medicine and orthopedics specialties. The technology is currently available in a limited private preview capacity, and AWS intends to collaborate closely with customers to determine plans for expansion.

Tehsin Syed, General Manager of Health AI at AWS, stated, “We incorporate feedback to enhance the underlying technology. From an adoption standpoint, there is significant interest, and we are committed to ensuring that it works seamlessly at scale.”