The Number One Use Case for AI in Medicine Isn’t Diagnosis

When clinicians hear "AI in healthcare," many imagine automated diagnostics or image interpretation. But as it turns out, the biggest impact AI is having thus far in medicine today is far more practical: clinical documentation.

Dr. Spencer Dorn, a gastroenterologist and professor at UNC, emphasized this point during a recent How I Doctor podcast episode with Offcall co-founder Dr. Graham Walker. "The leading use case right now that people are most excited about is ambient intelligence," he said. "Physicians are spending way too much time writing notes." [Read the full transcript here].

Why Ambient AI Is a Game-Changer

AI scribes and note-generation tools are gaining traction because they target a universal pain point. As Dr. Sarah Gebauer noted during a recent AI for Clinicians webinar, "Having so many notes to write and to do every day is a real burden on a lot of clinicians, so I certainly have friends who are primary care doctors who have said they just won't practice anywhere, ever again that doesn't have this technology because it reduces their workloads so much.”

Limitations Still Exist

While promising, these tools aren’t perfect. As Dr. Dorn shared, "Most inpatient physicians write their notes before seeing the patient — based on labs, consults, and trends. Current ambient tools don’t address that pre-charting burden yet." [Listen here]

Summarization technologies, however, could bridge this gap. Dorn noted the potential of AI to help synthesize fragmented data across systems: "We're drowning in PDFs. AI could finally help make this information usable again."

The Takeaway: Physicians, if you're looking for a high-impact entry point into AI, documentation support is a great place to start. It can help to reduce cognitive load, improve patient communication, and may even restore some joy to the practice of medicine.

→ Access a full list of Dr. Graham Walker and Dr. Sarah Gebauer’s recommended tools by reading Offcall’s free AI for Clinicians resource guide.