As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more common across a wide range of Canadian sectors and industries, doctors say the technology – if used carefully and thoughtfully – can help address some of the inefficiencies in Canada’s strained healthcare system. A scribe uses AI to transcribe and summarize conversations between patients and doctors, creating medical notes that physicians otherwise would have to make themselves as they listen to their patient, it’ll actually free up about three to four hours per week for physicians.
In Toronto at St. Joseph’s Health Centre and St. Michael’s Hospital, both operated by Unity Health, an AI model is used to monitor all of the hospitals’ general internal medicine and general surgery patients. It tracks patients and monitors them every hour, on the hour, and it typically ingests about 150 to 170 parameters, and it predicts if somebody is going to die or go to the ICU in the next 48 hours. As soon as it reaches a high-risk threshold, it’s automated to the patient medical team. The tool was implemented by Unity Health around five years ago, it has led to a 26 per cent reduction in unexpected mortality.
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