Ontario audit finds errors in government approved AI medical scribes
Ontario's Auditor General, Shelley Spence, just called out some big issues with AI-powered medical scribe tools, the ones meant to help doctors take notes and organize patient records.
In a recent report, she found that all 20 government-approved systems tested made mistakes like inventing or missing information, which could mess up treatment plans and put patient health at risk.
Shelley Spence warns about AI scribes
While the province's Minister Stephen Crawford says these errors showed up only in testing (not while doctors were actually treating patients), Spence pointed out that about 5,000 doctors are already using these AI scribes.
She even told her own doctor to double-check the AI transcript after her visit.
Similar worries have popped up in the US too, where OpenEvidence has faced scrutiny over hallucinations and incomplete answers, and doctors said it can sometimes draw overly strong conclusions from small studies.