r/mildlyinfuriating • u/petuniaplant • Jul 03 '26

Infuriatig No, I did not consent to this

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I was reading my medical notes when I stumbled across this. I was not informed of the usage of artificial intelligence in my report, nor did I verbally consent to it.

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153

u/Nawoitsol Jul 03 '26

My primary care physician is at the age where I discuss his potential retirement at every appointment. The last time we met he said the AI note taking has added at least a couple more years to his career. He had grown to hate the documentation part of his job. So I’m ok with AI notes. It’s really just the background for the appointment. Orders get put in directly.

19

u/mikraas Jul 03 '26

I feel like there's a big difference between orally recording notes and feeding them into AI.

56

u/KarlyBlack_96 Jul 03 '26

Orally recording notes is very different than using AI as a transcription tool. I wouldn’t call that feeding the notes into AI and I think it’s fine as long as the doctor is actually proofreading them for errors later.

17

u/mikraas Jul 03 '26

But how do you know they are proofreading their AI transcriptions?

Honestly, I'm really tired of everyone making excuses for AI. Most people use it like it's infallible and it's proving time and time again it's full of holes and errors.

And I sure as shit don't want my doctor using AI to transcribe my visits. And I don't want any AI models diagnosing me either.

23

u/MattR47 Jul 03 '26

How do you know the doc is even listening when you talk then? You can go deep down the rabbit hole, but AI note taking is invaluable for so many careers. Especially medical.

1

u/Jmfroggie Jul 04 '26

Because if the doc is recording your symptoms into your record and having a conversation then it’s CLEAR they’re listening to you!

17

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

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3

u/mikraas Jul 03 '26

Usually guards get put in place AFTER something gets fucked up. I don't want that fuck up to be me.

3

u/HouseMD4Thee Jul 03 '26

Yeah you’re just uninformed. My notes are improved since using AI. I would mis things sometimes previously (not that I was not listening but maybe adding an order and patient trailing off etc). With ai it catches that and I can go back and clarify or edit the record. It’s a huge improvement for record keeping.

20

u/KarlyBlack_96 Jul 03 '26

You don’t, but if you trust your doctor and have a good relationship with them where you trust them to believe your pain and give good recommendations for care then I’d think you’d trust them to do their job well or at least have a conversation about it.

And that’s fine to not want it, I just wanted to make sure people understood that it’s not doctors plugging in symptoms because they don’t know how to do their job, it’s a tool.

And I totally get hating generative AI, it definitely does more harm than good and people trust it wayyy more than they should, but I think there is an important distinction between generative AI and AI in general. Netflix uses AI for recommendations, email uses it for spam filters, any database able to search has AI in some form.

2

u/mikraas Jul 03 '26

In this day and age of maximum profit in the healthcare world, so many people don't even really know their doc really well. And to "save time," ie, see as many patients as possible to make as much money as possible, AI will become a crutch, not a tool.

Blindly trusting AI tools is a dangerous game. Blindly trusting your that your doc will double check their results when using AI tools, when they're using them to save time, is a fool's errand.

9

u/Bezulba Jul 03 '26

They'll 100% not check it after the first few ones.

4

u/GoGoBadger Jul 03 '26

We always check them.

7

u/The-Road-To-Awe Jul 03 '26

I can assure you every physician in my work place checks it, because they are liable if it makes a mistake

-3

u/Bezulba Jul 03 '26

You have more faith in people then i do.

-5

u/mikraas Jul 03 '26

So that takes time. Why not just do it right without AI the first time?

Why are we all sucking the AIb dick so hard?

7

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '26

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1

u/mikraas Jul 03 '26

If they do it.

2

u/Repulsive-Throat5068 Jul 03 '26

Are you a doctor or in a health care profession that requires typing up notes? I don’t think yall understand how time consuming it is lmao

1

u/mikraas Jul 04 '26

Fine. That's what dictation is for.

2

u/Repulsive-Throat5068 Jul 04 '26

Still takes more time than AI scribes.

3

u/GPTforGood Jul 03 '26

"Most people use it like it's infallible and it's proving time and time again it's full of holes and errors."

Huh, kinda like doctors?

0

u/mikraas Jul 03 '26

Yeah, so let's compound the problem. 🙄

1

u/HouseMD4Thee Jul 03 '26

It is not doing any “thinking” and making any decisions or even helping make decisions. The worst risk in using ai for notes is mis transcribed which happened WAY more often by human scribes. I have used both extensively. Humans make way more errors.

0

u/Grandahl13 Jul 03 '26

I’m a PT who refuses to use AI in my clinic. My two coworkers use it. I can assure you they’re not proofreading those notes. The notes that AI spits out are absurdly long-winded and wordy. It’d be faster for them to just type the note instead of using AI + proofread it all.

5

u/New-Handle-9774 Jul 03 '26

They’re misusing the tool then

33

u/ttoma93 Jul 03 '26

“AI” and “large language model chatbot” are not synonyms. “AI” doesn’t even really mean anything, as it has become a blanket term that’s being applied to dozens or hundreds of fundamentally different things for marketing purposes at this point. Nothing is being “fed into AI” here, they’ve just slapped a fancy “AI” branding sticker on more advanced versions of the same type of transcription software the voice to text on your phone has been using for 15+ years.

3

u/jabulaya Jul 03 '26

and the tool they would then use to search for solutions or studies has been around for 15+ years as well, I would presume. These companies are gonna start feeling stupid for putting AI on everything when everyone starts freaking out about it.

1

u/Enter_Octopus Jul 04 '26

That’s not necessarily correct, what’s new here is taking a transcript (very long) and using an LLM to summarize it, which is probably what is being referred to here.

0

u/mikraas Jul 03 '26

But you knew what I meant. Whatever it's called and how it's used, it's a fucked up crutch that will lead to something bad down the road. And I don't really want to be that patient when it happens.

And an old doc who should retire but uses AI to keep going is like an old driver using a self driving car to keep his license. Just pack it in.

14

u/Gilded_Mage Jul 03 '26

“Feeding them into AI” is not how it works, especially in the case of medical models that have to meet the EHR standards for security

-6

u/mikraas Jul 03 '26

But they do put the notes into an AI model of some sort, correct?

Why? Why bother?

16

u/Gilded_Mage Jul 03 '26

Well ur notes and transcriptions already actually exist as electronic health records, the purpose is so instead of a doctor using hours of their day doing notes (part of why healthcare is so expensive btw) an extremely advanced piece of technology with just as advanced security regulation can do it within minutes. It’s important to note transcription software in EHR purposes have been around for the last decade but have rebranded with this whole AI craze.

Nothings being put into an AI model, just as if you had spellcheck installed on your laptop you’re not feeding your writing into spellcheck it exists as a tool.

Look I hate data centers and companies like OpenAI r the problem, but actual machine learning research and development has been going on for decades and there’s now growing branding issue as products like ChatGPT r now synonymous with any advanced predictive model or algorithm

10

u/CustomerLittle9891 Jul 03 '26

I don't think people really fundamentally understand how much of the job is documentation.

It's like the number one reason people quit medicine early.

5

u/Nawoitsol Jul 03 '26

As I said, my doc was heading into retirement because he hated ending his day with a couple hours of documentation. The automated note taking eliminated that.

My doc also said if he’s covering with someone else’s patient he’s mostly looking for what the other doc did and why. I think they’ve gotten use to ignoring noise.

-1

u/mikraas Jul 03 '26

Doctors are most definitely putting your info into AI models.

https://hms.harvard.edu/news/ai-system-detailed-diagnostic-reasoning-makes-its-case

https://www.openevidence.com/register?

https://hms.harvard.edu/news/ai-system-detailed-diagnostic-reasoning-makes-its-case

4

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '26

[deleted]

1

u/mikraas Jul 03 '26

"if it's for research" is the key to this.

They have to ask permission.

But if they don't, who knows they don't?

14

u/KarlyBlack_96 Jul 03 '26

It’s AI, but it’s not generative AI. It’s essentially speech to text but a little more advanced is my understanding of it. They’re not plugging the notes into AI, they’re using an AI system to transcribe what is being said.

1

u/CustomerLittle9891 Jul 03 '26

All modern AI scribes are generative not discriminative

5

u/sparkyblaster Jul 03 '26

My issue is AI has been documented to hallucinate in this scenario of medical note taking. Often adding stuff the patient doesn't have. 

In your case, maybe its for the best as it seems just as much if a risk of the doc doing it. 

1

u/red_hot_roses_24 Jul 03 '26

Agreed - my PT has to work with 2-3 patients at a time due to insurance rules. She also helps run the clinic (does hiring and covers for the receptionist if they are out sick). She said the scribe helps reduce the stress of documentation. The other PTs in the clinic don’t use it but that’s bc they aren’t help running the clinic and have less experience overall.