Doctors turn to AI-powered consultations to help ease GP burnout

An Australian start-up is supporting more than one million GP consultations each week thanks to AI and Google – and expects that number to surge to about 10 million soon. Here’s how your consult is changing.

Heidi Health uses AI to record and transcribe doctor consults with patients.

Doctors are increasingly using artificial intelligence to see more patients, using the technology to record consultations and transcribe notes into electronic medical records, helping ease GP burnout.

Heidi Health, an Australian medtech backed by the nation’s biggest venture capital firm Blackbird, says it has doubled the number of consultations it supports to more than a million in the past four months – thanks to Google.

Thomas Kelly founded the company in 2019 to eliminate missed diagnoses and believes Heidi can hit 10 million consultations in the medium term.

Heidi Health founder and CEO Thomas Kelly.

“Obviously, we are ambitious. Our mission at the company is to try to increase healthcare capacity. We are definitely hoping to at least double the amount of content, so the amount of sessions – like interactions that we touch by the end of the year – at least, if not more. Maybe it’s 10x, who knows?

“We’re very excited.”

Dr Kelly attributed the strong growth to switching to Google’s suite of cloud computing services, which has allowed him to scale rapidly.

But he is facing competition. Microsoft unveiled Dragon Copilot last month – an AI assistant targeting doctors and other health professionals, with the promise of boosting productivity while slashing burnout rates. It is yet to launch in Australia, with the US and Canada followed by Germany, France and the Netherlands as the initial markets.

Flyers like this one are displayed in many GP clinics, explaining how Heidi Health works.

Hal Baker, senior vice president and chief digital officer at WellSpan Health – a US company that owns hospitals, GP clinics and other services – said Dragon Copilot has saved him “pajama time”. The term refers to time spent in the evenings writing and reviewing patient notes, as well as catching up on other administration.

“We were one of the first to go live and have rolled it out to over 400 doctors. I have not had to write a note myself in that time – and boy, I don’t want to go back,” Dr Baker said.

“It’s getting back to the zero-sum game of time. Every 12 seconds is 1 per cent of one of my visits. Every time I have to click on the computer and look at the computer and type – that’s taking time away click by click, second by second. That’s stealing time for me and my patient.”

Dr Baker said it takes him about one minute to review a note, versus taking five to six minutes to perform the task manually. He said this also benefits patients.

“We find our doctors, we never ask them to do it, but they see a few more patients every day. What we’re finding is people are spending much less time at home doing what we call ‘pajama time’ after hours.”

In regard to Heidi, most participating GP clinics display a sign in waiting rooms explaining how the AI works. It says patient consent is crucial.

Dr Kelly said the company stores data on Australian servers and no audio is stored permanently following transcription. He said the transcripts were also unidentified.

Originally published as Doctors turn to AI-powered consultations to help ease GP burnout