Automating Clinical Documentation with Digital Scribes: Understanding the Impact on Physicians

Recently, digital scribe systems have been gaining popularity as a possible work-around solution to the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) documentation burden that affects many physicians. The proposed system would automate the clinical summary physicians take by capturing and extracting the patient-physician conversation during the consultation. While promising in concept, how this system would apply to real-world use and its limitations are still not well understood. To examine these issues, we designed a digital scribe prototype to generate notes of different qualities ranging from the reality of current state-of-the-art technology to the potential of future implementations. We conducted a ”Wizard of Oz” study with 24 primary care physicians using our digital scribe prototype in 4 simulated medical encounters followed by a semi-structured interview. This exploratory study provides an understanding of physicians’ interaction with digitally scribed notes, their perceptions on note quality, their perceived workflow impact and several directions for improvements.