NWT doctors will test AI scribes

YELLOWKNIFE – NWT healthcare workers will be able to use artificially intelligent note-taking software for the next year in a pilot program. Funding for 80 Mika AI Scribe licences is coming from Canada Health Infoway, according to a report by Cabin Radio News.

The NWT Department of Health and Social Services told Cabin Radio the pilot addresses a “growing challenge” of paperwork reducing time spent directly with patients and contributing to burnout.

“By testing AI-enabled documentation, the GNWT aims to improve patient experience and support providers while maintaining strong privacy safeguards,” the department stated.

Health Minister Lesa Semmler (pictured) said, “We are modernizing our health system in a responsible way to better support healthy people and communities, with privacy, consent, and professional judgement at the centre of this work.”

Patients will have to provide written consent before the software, Mika AI Scribe, can be used. It’ll be available “in select primary care and community health settings across the Northwest Territories.”

The territorial government said the software will abide by privacy protections set out in the Health Information Act.

“Mika AI Scribe does not record or keep audio files,” the territory stated.

“It works by transcribing live speech into a draft note, which the provider reviews and edits before manually copying it into the patient’s electronic medical record. The draft note is automatically deleted after seven days.”

Andrew Fox, the NWT’s information and privacy commissioner, said at least one conflict with the GNWT’s existing AI guidelines was apparent to him. Among the priorities in those guidelines, Fox said, is an instruction that employees “must not put any confidential information, including personal information, into an AI application.”

“From a privacy perspective – and that’s the important lens I would put on it – that’s good. At a 20,000-foot level, that’s the direction they’re setting,” he said.

“However, I don’t know that can be or will be universally observed.

“It’s hard for me to see, at least at this point, how you could work with an application for generative AI without disclosing personal health information into it so that it could use it.”

The current guidelines in use at the GNWT aren’t a mandatory policy.

The GNWT said only a patient’s care team can access information generated through AI transcripts. Data is stored only in Canada and “cybersecurity protections prevent unauthorized access.”

AI scribe services like this one are being introduced worldwide, and Fox isn’t the only one with concerns. Some studies have suggested AI transcription can occasionally misinterpret critical details, for example, and patient privacy is a hot topic in other jurisdictions.

Even so, some doctors say they’re lining up to use this kind of technology because of the benefits it can bring. In New Zealand, a senior health official this week said “we had people begging us to introduce it.” Doctors in Quebec have also advocated for AI scribing to be introduced.

In interviews and public briefings last year, some NWT physicians described a desire to adopt this kind of technology. One argued it could help the territory’s healthcare staffing crisis.

Dr Courtney Howard said of doctors using systems like Mika AI Scribe elsewhere: “What we’re hearing from people is that this is buying them hours back every day. So they get to have lunch, they get to go home from the clinic at a reasonable hour and see their kids.

“Those are the types of things where, if we can improve the lives of the physicians who are in town now, who are in the territory now, they are more likely to stay while we sort out the rest of the system’s issues.”

The GNWT told Cabin Radio the pilot will begin in mid-January and run until December 2026. An evaluation will take place halfway through, the territory said, “to review how the tool fits into systems and workflows before any decision is made about use beyond the pilot.”

Funding for 80 Mika AI Scribe licences is coming from Canada Health Infoway, a federally funded organization created in 2001 to pursue “innovative digital health solutions.”