AI-Powered Medical Scribe Transforming Clinical Documentation

What is an AI medical scribe and how does it benefit healthcare providers?

In the annals of modern medicine, few figures are more important that Sir William Osler, a Canadian-born doctor who was among the founders of Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Hospital and was considered one of the greatest diagnosticians of modern medicine. Osler created the first residency program for physicians and was the first to emphasize the need for medical students to not just spend time with textbooks or in lectures but to also spend time at the bedside with patients.

In fact, Dr. Osler’s greatest impact on medicine and medical education was the great importance he placed on doctors and students getting to know their patients as individuals and the importance he placed on face-to-face communication with patients in order to arrive at a correct diagnosis and treatment.  “Medicine is learned by the bedside and not in the classroom,” is a famous quote from Professor Osler.

Osler died in 1919, at a time when the first medical scribes had begun to assist physicians with their daily documentation. While he likely never imagined how important the role of medical scribes would become, if Osler were alive today, he would surely be a bit dismayed that computers at the bedside are competing with patients for physician eye contact, and he likely would have become a pioneer in the field of medical transcription.

In fact, we think Osler would be a fan of AI medical scribing precisely because he understood so well the need for doctors to focus on patients. Among his most famous quotations, after all, is this: “The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.”

Medicine should focus on patients — but how to achieve that?

But too often, today’s doctors struggle to focus their time and attention on the patient — not for lack of good intentions, but precisely because modern medicine demands so much in adhering to regulations, documenting care, and sometimes wrestling with the sophisticated technological tools available to physicians.

Enter the human medical scribe — and the AI medical scribe.

Any medical scribe, whether a human being or a software program devised by humans, aims to relieve physicians of the burdens of daily documentation. Both have their place in today’s medicine.

Dr. Elliott Trotter, who founded the first medical scribe company in the world 30 years ago, recently founded a new venture that trains humans to work as medical scribes.

But for many practices today, employing human beings to transcribe medical encounters and create draft Progress Notes is simply too expensive, particularly when artificial intelligence has developed methods of doing that work at low cost and with a high degree of accuracy.

Sunoh.ai is transforming daily documentation and workflows for thousands of physicians precisely because it achieves that combination of cost-effectiveness and accuracy that physicians need.

Most important, however, is the impact that Sunoh can have where it matters most — promoting better outcomes by giving physicians more time to connect with their patients, understand their needs, and develop treatment plans that are more likely to maintain and restore health.

How Does Sunoh’s AI Medical Scribe Work?

The technology underpinning an AI medical scribe is complex and, like any modern technology, builds upon a long series of advances over many decades. Consider each part of the phrase “AI medical scribe.”

What Makes Sunoh the Best AI Medical Scribe?

The third point above — the creation of an accurate draft Progress Note that captures clinical details — is the key point that separate Sunoh from other AI medical scribes.

The key points that make Sunoh an industry leader include:

• Organizes a draft Progress Note: Sunoh places the physician’s observations in the correct section of the Note, capturing all the elements that constitute a medical exam, including the History of Present Illness (HPI), Review of Systems, Physical Exam, and more.
• Multi-specialty capabilities: Sunoh is not limited to handling transcriptions for primary care or general medicine. It can handle specialty exams, including dermatology, rheumatology, and vision care. Dentists can use Sunoh to handle periodontal charting and other documentation work. And behavioral health providers can switch the format from a standard Progress Note to the DAP note used in their specialty.

• Multilingual functionality: Providers can break down language barriers by using Sunoh to document care in English, Portuguese, and 20 dialects of Spanish—and work is ongoing to add additional languages.
• EHR-agnostic solution: Sunoh is available as a standalone solution that integrates with leading EHR systems, seamlessly adding information to patient records in the EHR of the provider’s choice.
• Saves valuable documentation time: Most importantly, many practices report that Sunoh is saving them two hours of documentation time per provider per day, helping improve their efficiency, boost patient satisfaction, and helping doctors get back some personal time so that they can improve their work/life balance.

Is Sunoh Secure and HIPAA Compliant?

When it comes to healthcare IT records, security is every bit as important as accuracy. Unfortunately, cyberattacks against the information systems of medical institutions continue to increase. Healthcare data breaches reached a record level in 2023, with an estimated 133 million records exposed — with an average of two hacks or thefts every day involving 500 or more patient records. Healthcare data breaches cause havoc to patients’ credit, medical and other records.

Sunoh takes privacy and security of patient data very seriously and has built security and privacy into the product from the ground up:

• The generated Progress Note is securely stored in the practice’s EHR database and is not archived by healow.
• Sunoh automatically deletes recordings and transcripts after seven days.
• No PHI/PII is shared outside of Sunoh and is not used to train AI models.

Although Sunoh complies with all HIPAA and industry standards for the security and protection of patient data, it is important that users understand that no hardware or software by itself is considered HIPAA compliant.

Users of any such product also have an obligation to follow all their obligations and industry best practices to ensure that they remain in compliance with all applicable regulations.

How Sunoh Helps Healthcare Organizations

The benefits outlined above are applicable to a variety of medical specialties. Here are some key advantages of an AI medical scribe for each of the following areas of medical practice:

Primary Care Physicians

• Significant reduction in after-hours EHR documentation time, meaning providers get back some “pajama time” to spend at home with their families.
• Improved patient interactions and engagement during visits, leading to greater depth of understanding, better outcomes, and higher professional satisfaction.
• Overall increase in practice efficiency and productivity, translating into more patient visits and stronger revenue for the practice.

Psychiatrists

• Accurate and comprehensive documentation of patient encounters.
• Reduced administrative burden, allowing more focus on patient care.
• Improved workflow efficiency.

Emergency Physicians

• Real-time assistance with documentation during fast-paced patient encounters.
• Reduced time spent on data entry and retrieval, leaving more time for making critical decisions.
• Enhanced ability to provide timely patient care, prioritize cases, and conduct follow-up.

Cardiologists, oncologists, and other specialists

• Customizable to specific documentation needs and preferences.
• Improved accuracy and completeness of clinical notes.
• Streamlined workflows and increased productivity

Nurses and medical assistants

• Reduced time on transcription and data entry tasks.
• Improved collaboration and communication with physicians.
• Enhanced ability to focus on direct patient care.

Healthcare administrators

• Increased efficiency and productivity across the organization.
• Potential for improved Revenue Cycle Management through accurate and timely documentation, leading to timely submission of reimbursements and collection of payments.
• Enhanced physician and staff satisfaction, leading to better retention of staff and lower overall costs of operations and retraining.

Implementing Sunoh at Your Organization

Thanks to Sunoh’s flexible and EHR-agnostic design, it is suitable for use with leading EHR systems, and is tightly integrated with eClinicalWorks. That ensures that the documentation providers achieve with Sunoh can be easily integrated into each patient’s record.

Sunoh’s flexibility makes it useful for primary and family medicine, dentistry, vision care, behavioral health, many specialties, and health centers.

Implementing Sunoh is simple. The process begins with a demo request at sunoh.ai.

Once a practice or system is ready, our experts undertake a comprehensive onboarding and training process to ensure a successful implementation. Technical support is just a phone call away or available 24/7/365 at the my.sunoh.ai customer support portal.

Transform Clinical Documentation with Sunoh’s AI Medical Scribe

While medical practices of all kinds face a common challenge in meeting daily documentation needs, each practice approaches that challenge in a slightly different way. Implementation of Sunoh at each organization will yield returns — in time, efficiency, patient satisfaction, and improved work/life balance — that depend upon the practice’s size and priorities.

Sunoh customer success stories to date include:

• Brownfield Regional Medical Center, a Federally Qualified Health Center in Texas, found that Sunoh dramatically cut down the time they needed to complete patients’ charts, from 30 days to having such work completed in just one day.
• Providers at Oregon’s Canyonville Health and Urgent Care were most impressed by the 99% accuracy of Sunoh’s documentation, which offered providers reassurance and helped free clinical staff to tend to other important tasks.
• Goodtime Family Care, a small family medicine practice in Baltimore, saw a 50% reduction in documentation time after implementing Sunoh. That has enabled staff to complete documentation during office hours and achieve better work/life business.
• Regional Medical Associates, a pain control practice in Delaware, is saving 70% of documentation time with new patients and up to 90% of time spent on follow-up care after implementing Sunoh.

More than 50,000 physicians nationwide now rely upon Sunoh.ai to handle the bulk of their daily documentation, improving efficiency, saving time, and helping providers reduce the risks of provider burnout.

Getting started with Sunoh is simple. Click here to learn more about how Sunoh works. Ready to book a demo? Click here.