AI to make doctor visit notes shorter and clearer
Helping Doctors Doctor: Using AI to Automate Documentation and "De-Autonomate" Health Care
This project will build AI tools that listen to clinic visits and combine that with medical records to create shorter, clearer visit summaries for patients and doctors.
Quick facts
| Grant type | NIH-funded research |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | University of Pennsylvania NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Philadelphia, United States) |
| Project ID | NIH-11145204 on NIH RePORTER |
What this research studies
The team will use recordings of patient–clinician conversations together with electronic health record data to teach AI how to pull out the most important facts from an office visit. They will apply techniques from natural language processing and computer vision to label and summarize relevant clinical information. The goal is to produce concise encounter summaries that reduce the time clinicians spend on documentation while preserving key medical details. Work will be tested using real clinic encounters and integrated with existing EHR workflows, with attention to privacy and data protections.
Who could benefit from this research
Good fit: Ideal participants are outpatient clinic patients who are willing to have their visit audio recorded and allow their EHR data to be used to improve documentation tools.
Not a fit: Patients who receive only inpatient or emergency care, decline recordings or data sharing, or use languages not supported by the system may not benefit from this work.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, this could cut the time doctors spend on notes, make medical records easier to understand, and give patients clearer summaries of their visits.
How similar studies have performed: Commercial transcription tools and some research have shown promise for automating notes, but combining visit audio, EHR data, and computer-vision-derived information to create concise clinical summaries is a relatively new approach.
Where this research is happening
Philadelphia, United States
- University of Pennsylvania — Philadelphia, United States (Active)
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Johnson, Kevin B. — University of Pennsylvania
- Study coordinator: Johnson, Kevin B.
About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page below.