AI tools that take notes for GPs could miss vital information, study suggests

A study conducted by the University of Edinburgh has raised concerns that AI‑driven note‑taking assistants used by general practitioners may overlook clinically relevant non‑verbal cues and discourage patients from sharing sensitive information. The research concluded that while AI scribes can help with administrative tasks, further investigation is needed to understand how they function in specific healthcare environments and how their design supports both patients and clinicians. The findings follow reports from the BBC months ago, in which doctors from the West Midlands said their workload had been significantly reduced after using the transcription tool Heidi. In a single session in Dudley, the tool was credited with cutting a backlog of patient letters from six months to just 14 days. One of the key findings noted that although AI tools can capture what patients say, they sometimes miss important aspects of a consultation such as facial expressions, gestures and emotional state. The study observed that AI‑generated summaries tend to prioritise objective information, potentially at the expense of the patient’s personal narrative and experience of illness. Researchers also found that patients may be reluctant to disclose delicate details—including substance abuse, domestic maltreatment or mental‑health struggles—when they know the consultation is being recorded and processed by AI. They emphasized that manual note‑taking continues to serve important functions for clinicians, aiding reasoning and reflection on what the patient has conveyed. The study suggested that using AI scribes could lead to “cognitive offloading” for clinicians, meaning the tools take on some of the cognitive effort. This can free clinicians to engage in more meaningful conversations with patients or to concentrate on complex tasks. However, the authors warned that reliance on AI might impair recall and skill development, citing instances where clinicians failed to recognise their own notes or to remember patient details at a later encounter.