Why " Virtual Assistants " Won ' t Remove EHR Pain Points Quickly

In a recent note, I commented on the emergence of"virtual scribes" (see:Virtual Scribe Vendors Remotely Generate EHR Notes and Coding). This is hospital service with physicians dictating the details of a patient office encounter. At a later time, a remote transcriptionist employed by a virtual scribe company enters the essential dictated data into the hospital EHR. These remote transcriptionists have access to the hospital EHR for this data entry. This is in contrast with the original and continuing idea of EHR scribes who are physically present in the examining room with the doctor and patient and perform all EHR keyboard entries.However, It should not some as a surprise that the term"virtual assistant" is now taking on a new meaning and can refer to a software"assistant" rather than to a person. This new definition was explained in a longish recent article on this topic (see:Can Virtual Assistants Eliminate EHR Usability Pain Points?). Here are two quotes from it:But dictation software is more or less a one-way street.The challenge for AI developers is to create intelligent systems with bi-directional capabilities: [the development of computerized] virtual assistants that can more or less independently perform background information-gathering work and synthesize those results into a meaningful conversation with providers.[and]Virtual assistants could be the answer that fed-up providers are looking for. Ideally,these tools will...

Source: Lab Soft News - January 21, 2019 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Information Technology Healthcare Innovations Medical Research Source Type: blogs