AI to Allow Doctors to Focus on Patients, Forgetting About Typing

AI has made its way into primary care consultations this month. The aim is for this tool to free family doctors from having to focus on the screen and keyboard to take notes for reports, allowing them to concentrate solely on listening and conversing with the patient to gather the most relevant personal and clinical information. This should foster a closer relationship and lead to a better diagnosis.

For now, it is just a pilot programme, but the plan agreed upon by the Ministry of Health and the regional health departments is for the system to be operational in all primary care consultations across the country by the end of 2027. The Health Minister explained on Tuesday that during this month and the next, AI will begin to operate experimentally in medical offices in seven regions that have volunteered to test the system's advantages and problems and determine what possible improvements need to be made.

Mónica García indicated that the process, which will have specific state and European funding for its general deployment, will always be controlled by the healthcare professional, who will be the one to review, correct, and validate the automated summary. This format has already been successfully used in the UK and is being implemented in Sweden and Switzerland, among other healthcare systems.

The Health Minister indicated that AI will likely have more functions in health centres in the future, but for now, it will start only with the transcription and automated summary of the consultation. Always with the patient's permission, AI will record the conversation with the specialist, summarise it, and present it in a format to be included in the record. The doctor will review and adjust the content and incorporate the diagnosis, treatment, and possible tests or referrals. The revised report will be the one added to the medical history.

In the future, according to health sources, it will be considered with the regions to use AI in other possible support tasks in health centres, such as appointment requests and management, professionals' agenda management, or preparing summaries about the patients they will see in the consultation.

García, who attended Congress to present the projects she has underway or will activate in the short and medium term, announced that after the holidays, the ministry wants to launch what she called 'Afternoons with a Plan'. She did not go into details but clarified that it is a programme to offer free and healthy leisure, physical activity, and nutrition alternatives to children and adolescents during after-school hours. It will be co-financed by the European Social Fund and developed in collaboration with the Gasol Foundation, mainly targeting children from more vulnerable families or groups. A recent report by Gasol's NGO revealed that the lifestyle habits related to the health of Spaniards aged 8 to 16 are rapidly deteriorating, with excessive screen use, lack of sleep, increasingly poor diets moving away from the Mediterranean diet, and a clear rise in sedentary behaviour.

Among García's announcements is also the commissioning of a survey on Sexual Health across the country by the CIS, which has not been conducted since 2009. It should allow for the design of more reality-based public campaigns and policies and be a key tool, for example, in combating the enormous increase in sexually transmitted infections, especially among young people. When the minister addressed the plan to subsidise the first 100 euros of glasses or contact lenses needed by all children under 16 for the next school year, she estimated that the aid would reach half a million students.