When a patient walks into a GP\u2019s office in Australia today, the doctor may begin with a question: \u201cDo you give consent to use an AI scribe to record our conversation?\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what is supposed to happen, at least.<\/p>\n
According to an online poll by the Royal Australian College of GPs (RACGP), use of AI scribes by doctors in Australia nearly doubled from 22% in August 2024 to 40% in November 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n Those AI tools \u2013 such as that offered by Australian company Heidi \u2013 record, transcribe and summarise the conversations between doctors and patients for medical notes.<\/p>\n \u201cWe make a big effort to let patients know we are using AI, and give them the option to opt out. That\u2019s a really key bit,\u201d says Dr Max Mollenkopf, a GP based in Newcastle. \u201cJust telling patients what\u2019s going on, not trying to be subtle about it.\u201d<\/p>\n Heidi is increasingly being used by GPs, with the Melbourne-based startup saying it has supported more than 115m sessions in 18 months across the globe.<\/p>\n The increasing popularity of AI medical scribes may help to relieve doctors\u2019 administrative burden, but experts point to concerns about consent, privacy and accuracy.<\/p>\n Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n Doctors Guardian Australia spoke to stressed it was important to gain consent from patients before using such AI tools.<\/p>\n But Dr Elizabeth Deveny, the chief executive of the Consumer Health<\/a> Forum, says not all practices are having explicit conversations about the tools. \u201cI went to my GP recently and in the waiting room there was one poster for an AI scribe,\u201d she says. \u201cIt basically said: \u2018By reading this, you understand that your consent is being given.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n When doctors do ask, Deveny says it is framed as a \u201cyou don\u2019t mind if I use this?\u201d conversation. \u201cConsider the power differential between a consumer and the clinician. What are they going to say?\u201d<\/p>\n For some GPs, AI scribes are seen as an administrative tool, allowing them to better connect with patients during a consultation by allowing them to focus on the patient directly rather than furiously typing notes, and to help with record-keeping afterwards.<\/p>\n \u201cThey also use it as a compliance tool,\u201d Mollenkopf says. \u201cThe nice thing about the scribe tools is that they can take that consult and then put it in a format that\u2019s suitable if you\u2019ve got a Medicare audit.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo it gives GPs a lot of reassurance that if they do get audited, they can prove to Medicare the work they did, because the scribe tool heard the whole consult.\u201d<\/p>\n Mollenkopf was a beta tester for Heidi AI but was not paid by the company for that work or testimonials, and continues to pay for his own use of the app. He has also been using Heidi\u2019s Comms service, an AI bot that can call patients on behalf of doctors to get an update on their condition between consultations.<\/p>\n \u201cYou would think that [some patients] would be furious about it \u2026 but that\u2019s actually quite a small minority,\u201d Mollenkopf says.<\/p>\n Deveny says there is concern that outsourcing note-keeping to AI risks doctors failing to retain and recall their conversations with patients.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat consumers are saying is when they go back to see their GP, it feels to them like a GP did not emotionally connect with them \u2026 because the GP doesn\u2019t seem as familiar with what happened last time,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Dr Caitlin Curtis, a University of Queensland researcher specialising in responsible AI, agrees. \u201cNote-taking isn\u2019t just administrative \u2013 when we write and summarise things, it\u2019s part of how we think,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cIt helps us process information, reflect, prioritise, and really understand what\u2019s going on. If that process is automated or removed, it may save time \u2013 but it raises the question of what else might be lost.\u201d<\/p>\n RACGP digital health and innovation deputy chair Dr Janice Tan says, however, that freeing up some of the administrative burden from doctors could help.<\/p>\n \u201cClinicians might actually have room to think again \u2013 to be present in a consultation rather than half-distracted by paperwork,\u201d she says. \u201cBurnout in general practice is bad right now, and if AI can take some of that load, that\u2019s worth paying attention to.\u201d<\/p>\n AI note-takers also do not record the tone, emotion and nonverbal signals a patient uses when saying something \u2013 for example, in a mental health consultation, Curtis says.<\/p>\n The tools are currently exempt from Therapeutic Goods Administration regulations because they do not directly diagnose patients.<\/p>\n The risk to patient data is a constant in health, and Australia has already had a number of privacy breaches related to medical data, including Australian Clinical Labs<\/a>, Medibank<\/a>, and Genea<\/a>.<\/p>\n The RACGP president, Dr Michael Wright, said he was optimistic AI tools would help patients and GPs work more closely together in deciding the best course of action for individual patients, but said privacy and consent concerns are an issue.<\/p>\n \u201cThe GP \u2013 and potentially the patient, too \u2013 needs to confirm that any AI output is correct,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Heidi co-founder and chief executive, Dr Tom Kelly, says data is processed in the country the patient is in and is not used to train the AI or sold to others. The company uses third-party testing and auditing to keep the data secure, he adds.<\/p>\n He says the company holds itself to a high standard in ensuring transcriptions \u2013 which Heidi\u2019s model processes itself \u2013 are accurate, but doctors still need to check their AI-assisted notes.<\/p>\n \u201cEven clinicians mistype and misspeak and get things wrong,\u201d he says. \u201cBut the errors we [Heidi] make are weirder because they\u2019re unusual mishearings that humans wouldn\u2019t make.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When a patient walks into a GP\u2019s office in Australia today, the doctor may begin with a question:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":570805,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-570804","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}