2 minute read
Creating an effective solution to tackle the burden of medical documentation
Dr Mohamed Alibashe, CEO and Co-Founder of HealthMe Ltd, explains why there is an urgent need to tackle the burden of medical documentation – the leading cause of doctor’s burnout.
Medical documentation is an important part of clinical activity. It plays a critical role in describing and updating a patient case, maintaining their follow-up, evaluating the risks and benefits of the proposed intervention, and documenting the patient consent. The process of medical documentation has been changed by the widespread use of electronic medical record systems (EMRS), bringing a positive impact but also new challenges along with it.
The development of EMRS has helped transition from handwritten notes and prescription to electronic forms. The rationale behind the use of computer-based systems was to provide a better quality of care and to decrease the incidence of medical errors.
Nevertheless, a recent study has shown that the time spent by doctors on the EMRS, doing clerical activities such as documentation, order entry, billing and other administrative tasks, represents almost 50 per cent of their workday. In this regard, doctors spend more time on the EMRS than with their patients with the latter representing only 28 per cent of their time compared to 44 per cent. Moreover, the time spent on the EMRS is associated with a significant increase in doctor workload, generating dissatisfaction, loss of productivity that can be as high as 50 per cent, and loss of revenue. Increasing use of EMRS, at the expense of the patients, changes doctor priorities. To avoid overtime, hospital doctors might prioritise clerical activities instead of care delivery.
The development of new technologies such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) is already disrupting multiple industries. In the healthcare industry, AI is progressively entering the field of biomedical research and diagnostics.
At HealthMe, we are leveraging the power of AI and ML to tackle the burden of medical documentation and provide every doctor with a tool that is reliable, easy to use and secure. An important consideration when designing our tool was to not create any workload or data overload. The way HealthMe tackles the burden of medical documentation is by automatically generating medical reports for doctors in real time during consultations. Our solution interferes with neither the clinician workflow nor the way the consultation takes place. HealthMe is solving this significant unmet global need and has already partnered with a number of hospitals and clinics. Properly managing the process of medical documentation reduces the burden on hospital workforces, decreases doctor burnout, increases patient safety, and improves patient care and satisfaction.
We passionately believe that the application of AI can significantly improve the experience of clinicians, the decision-making process, and in our case the process of medical documentation. Our mission is to give back time to doctors and improve the patient-doctor relationship. We want doctors to focus on their patients and enjoy their work. We also want patients to spend quality time with their doctors, as this is a much needed and critical characteristic of the therapeutic process.
