comes amid increased demand for mental health services<\/a>.<\/p>\nBut one patient, who asked to remain anonymous, who was referred to Ranga told Guardian Australia they objected to AI being used in their sessions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way [the form] was worded \u2013 so defensively \u2013 it made me think that maybe there are a number of other people who have said something and that it\u2019s gotten to the point where they just thought: \u2018I just don\u2019t want to deal with their objections any more. Let\u2019s just make them sign something that says that we have to use it\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
The patient said finding a psychiatrist was not like going to another chemist, especially when Ranga came recommended to them, and has not sought another psychiatrist.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s not easily replaceable, and the process of having to go back to your doctor, make an appointment and often wait on another wait list to get back in \u2026 all just because you don\u2019t want to use AI \u2026 it\u2019s really weird.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ranga, whose practice is in the Melbourne Clinic in Richmond, did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Melbourne Clinic said it does not direct its accredited psychiatrists on their use of AI, but understands psychiatrists were increasingly incorporating the use of AI to help manage administrative load.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn those cases, psychiatrists will disclose the use of AI to all patients and request consent prior to its use. If consent is not granted, they will not use AI.\u201d<\/p>\n
The spokesperson said practitioners at the clinic are ultimately independent from the clinic.<\/p>\n
Heidi AI \u2013 one of the most popular AI scribes \u2013 has been used in 115m sessions in the past 18 months.<\/p>\n
The Melbourne co-founder of Heidi AI, Dr Tom Kelly, said in March that data was processed in the country the patient was in and was not used to train the AI or sold to others. The company uses third-party testing and auditing to keep the data secure, and aims to ensure high standard in transcripts \u2013 but said doctors still need to check their notes.<\/p>\n
Risks and regulations<\/p>\n
The head of policy for Digital Rights Watch, Tom Sulston, said AI transcription was imperfect and was often trained on male, white, heterosexual, English-speaking users, meaning mistakes were more common for other demographics.<\/p>\n
He said there was also a \u201cvery real risk\u201d of medical data being compromised or leaked, and patients that were wary of AI scribes may self-censor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s particularly important with healthcare that may carry stigma in wider society \u2013 sexual and mental health, for instance,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAI is not implemented to improve healthcare outcomes or patient experience, but to reduce administration costs for a clinic.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this scenario, patients are not the customer, they\u2019re the product.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the RACGP consumer groups have raised concerns that consent conversations with patients over use of AI tools are either lacking, or there\u2019s a power imbalance between patients and doctors.<\/p>\n
Sulston said no one should be denied healthcare because they don\u2019t want to be forced to give their private data to AI, and called for stronger regulation, given the tools are now exempt from Therapeutic Goods Administration regulations because they do not diagnose patients.<\/p>\n
\u201cRegulators and legislators need to step-up and provide Australians with a legally enshrined right to refuse AI systems without facing repercussions to our health,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The patient said people should be able to opt out of scribes and suggested they were not confident the notes made would be accurate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Melbourne psychiatrist has refused new patients unless they agree to allow her to use an AI scribe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":679001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,137,500],"class_list":["post-679000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679000","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=679000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}