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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday March 04 2018, @09:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong? dept.

Physicians spend less time than ever with patients — just 27 percent of the workday, according to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2016.

The main culprit:  electronic health records. Doctors find themselves increasingly glued to computers, acting as glorified data entry administrators.

Even when they’re in the same room as patients, doctors interacted with them only 52 percent of the time. However, the study also found a contra-indicator: doctors who used some kind of document support — a medical scribe or dictation service — spent more time interacting directly with patients.

That’s a dynamic LexiconAI hopes to capitalize on using GPU-infused AI.

“We thought this was a problem that we could tackle,” said Matt Rubashkin, co-founder and CEO of the Silicon Valley-based startup. “There really needs to be a better way to attack the system. How do we empower doctors and help them focus on what’s important?”

Rubashkin and LexiconAI co-founder and CTO Ian Plosker both had worked in the digital health area previously, and saw firsthand how much time was being wasted on documentation.

The two joined forces with the intent of leveraging voice and speech recognition to reinvent how medical data is captured. They focused on using deep learning to let providers capture medical information more seamlessly, without interrupting their patient interactions. The result: LexiconMD, a mobile app that takes in unstructured speech and spits out structured data.

The app records the conversation between doctor and patient and streams the audio to LexiconAI’s cloud-based engine, which returns the captured text —complete with best word suggestions — in just 500 milliseconds.

The app integrates with many electronic health record systems to make it possible to automatically fill the right fields with the returned data, and Rubashkin claims that LexiconMD is 94 percent accurate out of the box. (For systems with which LexiconMD isn’t yet integrated, physicians can still use the speech recognition capabilities and simply plug the data that’s returned to them into the correct fields manually.)

“When people interact with LexiconMD, it’s like interacting with a human,” said Rubashkin. “Instead of you having to use specific words and adapt to it, our goal is for LexiconMD to adapt and learn from you.”


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 04 2018, @09:05PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 04 2018, @09:05PM (#647725)

    Al says you're Tarded and Fucked Up. That'll be this many dollars, bro.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday March 04 2018, @10:11PM (2 children)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday March 04 2018, @10:11PM (#647740) Journal

      What we need is an AI-powered death panel.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday March 04 2018, @10:53PM (1 child)

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Sunday March 04 2018, @10:53PM (#647757) Journal

        That will cost some extra dollars, though.

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
        • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday March 05 2018, @06:21AM

          by MostCynical (2589) on Monday March 05 2018, @06:21AM (#647875) Journal

          For $50, you can have a certificate that says "Report to repocessing plant 2298 in one day"
          for $5,000, you can have a certificate that says "Report to repocessing plant 2298 in four years"
          ...etc.

          --
          "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
    • (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday March 04 2018, @11:00PM (1 child)

      by krishnoid (1156) on Sunday March 04 2018, @11:00PM (#647758)

      Physicians spend less time than ever with patients — just 27 percent of the workday, according to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2016.
      ...
      The app records the conversation between doctor and patient and streams the audio to LexiconAI’s cloud-based engine, which returns the captured text —complete with best word suggestions — in just 500 milliseconds.

      "So doctor, this is kind of embarrassing, but you'll need to look inside my butt for something I put up there. It's a --"
      Completions: Over 6,000,000 results returned (1.2 seconds)

      • (Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Monday March 05 2018, @06:45AM

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 05 2018, @06:45AM (#647884) Journal

        "So doctor, this is kind of embarrassing, but you'll need to look inside my butt for something I put up there. It's a --"

        Unlike the study mentioned in TFS, this one is from the "Anals of Internal Medicine", right?

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday March 04 2018, @09:12PM (3 children)

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Sunday March 04 2018, @09:12PM (#647728) Homepage Journal

    Some doc in Maine lost her license because she refused to use them

    One of my witch doctors was unable to understand them

    I once worked on such a system. I protested that doctors would refuse to deal with it

    "Doctors are employees" was my coworkers reply

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    • (Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 04 2018, @09:40PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 04 2018, @09:40PM (#647733)

      The man chuckled. Mixed in with the sound of chuckling was a sickening gurgling sound coming from below the man. The one producing those gurgling sounds was, of course, the woman. Was. She no longer made any sounds at all. The man, having thoroughly satisfied himself, got up and childishly skipped to his next target.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 04 2018, @11:01PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 04 2018, @11:01PM (#647759)

      "Doctors are employees" was my coworkers reply

      Let's fuck them because we can (oh, is good to be the king, even if only once in a while) ...and...
      My ignorance is as good as your knowledge and experience.

      Seems like two constant attitudes in software engineering.

    • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday March 05 2018, @02:43PM

      by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Monday March 05 2018, @02:43PM (#647969) Journal

      On the doc in Maine, citatation needed. Physicians are still free to not use EMR's. Between 5 and 20% still do not.

      Sure, physicians don't like them. So the government provided a sweetener of up to a quarter million dollars per physician adopting EMR's over a five year period who met certain targets of use. Predictably, they jumped at the bait... most without fully realizing that this money - and then some - would be eaten up by the EMR vendors. That took care of the "non-employee" docs, and for corporately employed physicians it was a no-brainer to adopt them and take the money. Then again - when EHR's are finally made absolutely mandatory those who failed to adopt them will need to purchase them without having incentives to defray the cost.

      Many physicians do hate EHRs and EMRs. They'd rather have a document clerk or two maintaining a massive paper filing system for them and have their staffs send out one to three emails a day about, "Who's got so-and-so's chart? The doc needs it!" They mainly never saw the inefficiencies and costs of staying on paper because tremendous efforts are made in this country to cater to the physicians desires and needs.

      --
      This sig for rent.
  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 04 2018, @09:21PM (2 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday March 04 2018, @09:21PM (#647729) Journal

    streams the audio to LexiconAI’s cloud-based engine

    What could POSSIBLY go wrong? I mean, no one has EVER hacked into a doctor's ISP, or hacked a medical database, right? To hell with HIPPA, right?

    • (Score: 5, Funny) by frojack on Sunday March 04 2018, @10:33PM (1 child)

      by frojack (1554) on Sunday March 04 2018, @10:33PM (#647749) Journal

      We'll find out these streams end up being sent to India for verification or something, and somebody will hack that.

      Realistically, they, (the AI company, and or the Doctor, and the clinic) will have to retain the original audio recording for legal protection.
      So there's another million records that can be subpoenaed.

      Doctor walks into a bar.
      Waitress: What will you have.
      Doctor: Oh, a Bloody Mary.
      AI: (siri voice from pocket) Vaginal or Trauma induced?
      Doctor: Shutup you stupid AI, this is club.
      AI: So Blunt force trauma then?
      Doctor: Son of a bitch, what a pain in the ass!
      Ai: So Rectal Blunt force trauma then? Was that the bitch or her son?
      Waitress: Hey, who you calling bitch?
      Doctor: no, not you, its this cockamamie app.
      Ai: So Rectal Blunt force trauma, with genital maiming?

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @09:29AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @09:29AM (#647915)

        Yes, my first thoughts were ..
        Doctor: So when did the migraines begin?
        Patient: I was doing this huge MSExchange ...
        AI: Say no more! Boy do we have a deal for you!

        Next was cockney rhyming slang with Michael Caine ... but then the femmebots exploded ..

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 04 2018, @09:57PM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 04 2018, @09:57PM (#647736)

    Doctors find themselves increasingly glued to computers, acting as glorified data entry administrators.

    Maybe docs should wake up to the fact that they are in a service industry?

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by requerdanos on Sunday March 04 2018, @10:22PM (7 children)

      by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Sunday March 04 2018, @10:22PM (#647744) Journal

      Doctors find themselves increasingly glued to computers, acting as glorified data entry administrators.

      Maybe docs should wake up to the fact that they are in a service industry?

      Whether or not they achieve this awakening you call for, a disparity remains between the amount and expense of training and education required by a doctor vs. a data entry clerk. If you are using the one to do the work of the other, that's arguably very poor value.

      Solutions in the past have included having Doctors dictate patient notes, which takes less time and allows them to spend more time with patients, the notes being transcribed later by people who went to school for two years instead of fourteen, working for 150%-250% of minimum wage instead of 999% and up.

      However, some smart+unfeeling bean counters discovered that, if you vastly reduce the amount of attentive time Doctors spend with patients, you can fire the data entry person and only pay one of those salaries, having its recipient do the job of both, poorly, instead of his own job, well.

      This inarguably is a cost savings measure in that at the bottom of the sheet, fewer dollars are paid out in salaries, and fewer dollars are spent on dictation systems. It's just a stupid one that causes you to get a lot less of everything for your dollar that you're paying Doctors with.

      My health care provider, the United States Veterans' Administration, believes strongly in having its Doctors perform their own data entry. I am not impressed with the result.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 04 2018, @10:44PM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 04 2018, @10:44PM (#647752)

        Docs have an infamous reputation for nasty hand writing, and even without that, all the medical jargon requires specialized education, even for data entry clerks.

        Docs need to realize what they are trying to achieve, as a profession, rather than getting drenched in their entitled sentiment.

        I am not a doctor, but I say this as someone who have a couple physicians in my family - I see the both sides of the issue.

        • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday March 04 2018, @11:10PM (2 children)

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Sunday March 04 2018, @11:10PM (#647762) Journal

          I am not a doctor, but I say this as someone who have a couple physicians in my family - I see the both sides of the issue.

          Translation: I haven't spend 15 years studying and training in medicine, but my ignorance is as good as their experience. And I'm telling ya, doctors better learn this and learn it quick:

          Docs need to realize what they are trying to achieve, as a profession, rather than getting drenched in their entitled sentiment.

          Or else... beware the wrath of AC.

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
          • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 04 2018, @11:31PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 04 2018, @11:31PM (#647780)

            I spent so much time and money so I deserve this.

            Fuck you and your daughters.

            • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 04 2018, @11:40PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 04 2018, @11:40PM (#647784)

              Especially the daughters.

              Wait what are we talking about and who am I?

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by krishnoid on Sunday March 04 2018, @10:47PM (1 child)

        by krishnoid (1156) on Sunday March 04 2018, @10:47PM (#647755)

        However, some smart+unfeeling bean counters discovered that, if you vastly reduce the amount of attentive time Doctors spend with patients, you can fire the data entry person and only pay one of those salaries, having its recipient do the job of both, poorly, instead of his own job, well.

        That's hardly fair. I'm sure Finance is doing a great job identifying cost savings, and extending that perspective, they should be able to find even more.

        For example, what's this "Microsoft Excel" thing on our last budget report? Pfft -- you can do just fine with a paper ledger, and notepad.exe if you want to get fancy.

        • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday March 05 2018, @06:26AM

          by MostCynical (2589) on Monday March 05 2018, @06:26AM (#647877) Journal

          Huh? You need a custom EMR with outcomes reporting, patient tracking results tabulation, and more.
          And you need trainers, BAs, PMs and a consulting firm to help installation, and confrim adoption.
          that will be $2,000,000 per site.

          Efficiency!

          --
          "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
      • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Monday March 05 2018, @03:49AM

        by Snotnose (1623) on Monday March 05 2018, @03:49AM (#647848)

        Whether or not they achieve this awakening you call for, a disparity remains between the amount and expense of training and education required by a doctor vs. a data entry clerk. If you are using the one to do the work of the other, that's arguably very poor value.

        Unless you have the data entry clerk doing the doctor's job. Even if the DEC is only helpful 20% of the time, to the MBAs in charge it looks like a good tradeoff.

        --
        Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday March 05 2018, @05:04AM (1 child)

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Monday March 05 2018, @05:04AM (#647866) Journal

      But the original idea was that doctors serve the patients, not the bureaucracy.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday March 05 2018, @02:35PM

        by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Monday March 05 2018, @02:35PM (#647966) Journal

        Presumably, by recording the data in discrete format better efficiencies will be discovered. Health care, overall, will be able to be rendered at higher quality at lower costs overall. More health care will occur for each dollar spent.

        "Serving the bureaucracy" translates to allowing a medical economy-of-scale to form.

        That's the theory.

        --
        This sig for rent.
  • (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday March 04 2018, @11:36PM

    by krishnoid (1156) on Sunday March 04 2018, @11:36PM (#647781)

    That’s a dynamic LexiconAI hopes to capitalize on using GPU-infused AI.

    "And the patient suffered from diabetes mellitus accompanied by low insulin sensitivity -- hey, is this thing working? Normally it completes the whole sentence."
    [crickets]
    Best completion: and pancreatic insufficiency (6.7 seconds). Resuming blockchain verification and mining ...

  • (Score: 2) by goodie on Monday March 05 2018, @03:20AM (1 child)

    by goodie (1877) on Monday March 05 2018, @03:20AM (#647841) Journal

    If you ask me, it's not the "AI" part (as in, speech recognition as far as I can tell). The *only* thing this has going on for itself is: "The app integrates with many electronic health record systems to make it possible to automatically fill the right fields with the returned data". It's not the AI, it's the integration with EMR/EHR that might make this worthwhile. I'd be curious to actually see it used in the wild, and also to hear about the 6% or misplaced info that nobody will ever go fix... Probably sold as "residual error". But the crux of the issue often boils down to how well it integrates with other systems. This is the potential winner here to me, barring the marketing mumbo jumbo in TFA...

    • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday March 05 2018, @06:28AM

      by MostCynical (2589) on Monday March 05 2018, @06:28AM (#647878) Journal

      "Learning" the tab order for each variation of each screen will mean most doctors and nurses will just, as now, fill in the minimum data to get to next step (coffee/meeting/possibly, eventually, patient discharge)

      --
      "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
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