The scribe software is set to integrate with Best Practice this month, making notetaking more efficient and improving patient relationships.
AI scribes are transforming the day-to-day grind of general practice, but it seems Lyrebird Scribe – soon to be integrated into the market-leading patient management system, Best Practice – may be separating itself from the crowd.
Lyrebird is an AI transcription tool specifically designed for healthcare, created by university mates Kai Van Lieshout and Linus Talacko, in a two-week student hackathon.
The software automatically generates relevant medical documentation during a consultation.
Speaking to The Medical Republic, GP and founder and co-CEO of Nuvo Health Dr Ryan Vo said that for the handful of doctors at the practice who have been using the software for the past few months, Lyrebird AI has been a “gamechanger”, particularly for doctors who don’t touch-type.
Dr Vo, a practice owner and GP who uses Lyrebird himself, has been recommending it to Nuvo Health’s independent practitioners, and they have been spreading the word.
“The notes now are very comprehensive,” said Dr Vo.
“[Doctors] feel much more secure knowing that the critical things in the consult have been recorded and documented.
“And it’s helped them to write up medical reports and referral letters and things like that.”
Within Nuvo Health, doctors pay for an individual subscription for Lyrebird, although the company offers introductory and group promotions.
Dr Vo has heard anecdotally from doctors who have used other services that Lyrebird was more streamline and less complex.
“They’re always coming up with new features: there’s a mental health template, the ability to email patients with a summary of the consult,” said Dr Vo.
“And now with the recent announcement of the integration with Best Practice, I think that’s really going to really separate them from the rest of the market.”
Best Practice founder Frank Pyefinch said in a statement the Lyrebird integration allowed practitioners to “increase administrative efficiencies and reduce their time spent recording patient notes, both during and post consult”.
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Danielle Bancroft, Chief Product Officer at Best Practice, said the platform did not provide clinical decision-making support. Although Best Practice has “done bits and pieces around clinical decision support” she told TMR that GPs largely won’t trust using AI in that way just yet.
“The focus in the longer term is really trying to build trust – building out those AI models and the data the models are loading from.
“Then we can start to get more established, more intuitive ways of providing clinical decision support, where the clinician is still in control but they trust the data (clinical suggestions) are coming from,” she said.
Dr Vo said the Best Practice collaboration meant Lyrebird would be able to integrate other patient information, such as test results, into consult summaries.
It should also allow consult notes from Lyrebird to be accessible from within Best Practice, rather than doctors having to copy and paste the consult summary from the Lyrebird browser page into Best Practice, said Dr Vo.
“I think it will also give a bit more credibility and trust to doctors to use the tool, knowing that it’s supported by the incumbent leaders in medical software,” he added.
Beyond saving time, AI scribes allow doctors to focus on their patient, building better rapport and connection, said Dr Vo.
More comprehensive notes also mitigated medicolegal risk.
There had been some roadblocks – for busy doctors, adding another thing to the to do list was often futile, said Dr Vo.
But for most, after a walk-through with Dr Vo to understand exactly what Lyrebird can do, “they’re really blown away”.
Whereas he had expected the tool to appeal to more mature doctors, he said a new registrar had inquired about Lyrebird on their first day.
“Anything that can improve the way general practices are run I think will help, because at the moment the system is under a lot of strain, doctors are under a lot of strain and burnout is a real issue, particularly coming out of covid,” Dr Vo said.
Lyrebird Scribe integration will go live this month in a Bp Orchid SP2 release.
