Alberta creates its own AI-powered scribe

EDMONTON – Several emergency department physicians with Alberta Health Services are testing a homegrown artificial intelligence-based application that may improve interactions with patients, as well as physician efficiency. Originally created by Red Deer ED physician Dr. Mike Weldon (pictured right) and refined through a collaboration between AHS and the University of Alberta, the AHS Digital Scribe records and transcribes conversations between doctors and patients and translates relevant details into medical notes.

Physicians can then copy and paste that information into Connect Care, the province’s electronic medical record system. “It’s like having an assistant in the room with you who writes up the notes,” explains Dr. Weldon, who was an electrical engineer with programming skills before he became a physician.

“It means I can put all my focus on the patient and the conversation we’re having, and then when I’m back at a computer, my notes are already written up for me to review and add to the patient’s electronic record,” he says.

Without the digital scribe (informally named Jenkins), Dr. Weldon says he can see roughly 20 patients per eight-hour shift; when he uses the scribe, he can see three or four more per shift, an improvement in efficiency that could help lower emergency department wait times.

The Canadian Medical Association, with support from Scotiabank and MD Financial Management, has provided a two-year, $1-million grant for a pilot project to evaluate Jenkins. The funding comes from CMA’s Health Care Unburdened Grant Program.

“Burnout among emergency department doctors is very real. Anything that can help reduce some of the administrative burdens we face will be welcomed,” Dr. Weldon adds.

The evaluation study will look at Jenkins’ impact on the length and quality of patient interactions, physician time spent on notes, note length, as well as other measures.

The AHS Digital Scribe is being piloted in Emergency Departments at the Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre, and the University of Alberta and Royal Alexandra Hospitals in Edmonton.

Aside from Dr. Weldon, core members of the team include ED physicians Dr. Jake Hayward, Dr. Jeff Franc and Dr. Henry Li at the University of Alberta Department of Emergency Medicine; Jason Scarlett, PhD (pictured left), and Kevin Lonergan with AHS Data & Analytics; and Jesse Dunn, Information Technology.

Scarlett says an important plus with the Jenkins platform is that patient data are kept private, secure and within AHS control. Jenkins utilizes cloud services offered by the technology company Snowflake, avoiding a complicated and costly setup of computing resources.

“We’ve been able to leverage the cloud technology, language learning models and in-house know-how to get a well-functioning prototype put together in a very short time – just a matter of weeks,” Scarlett says.

“Personally, I think this is quite exciting. It’s the first innovation I’ve seen that could have a significant impact on length of stay in the emergency department, as well as reduce the number of people leaving without being seen because of lengthy waits.”

If it is shown to be successful, AHS will investigate a larger project that could be integrated with Connect Care.

More information on the AHS Digital Scribe project is available at the Canadian Medical Association site: University of Alberta | CMA. It’s expected the two-year pilot will be complete by June 2026.

Source: Greg Harris, Alberta Health Services