Heidi AI scribe to ease paperwork in all emergency departments
Health New Zealand is implementing Heidi, an artificial intelligence-based scribe tool, across all public emergency departments. The move aims to ease administrative tasks for emergency clinicians, as pressures on hospitals have remained high following the country's busiest winter period on record.
National rollout
The nationwide deployment follows pilot projects at sites including Hawke's Bay Hospital. During trials, clinicians reduced their average patient documentation time from around 17 minutes to just over four minutes. The system will be available through 1,000 licences for emergency clinicians, and an additional 100 for mental health crisis teams in emergency departments.
Health New Zealand has focused on implementing digital initiatives as part of its HealthX innovation programme, designed to address healthcare workforce challenges. The agency has previously set targets that 95% of emergency department patients should be admitted, discharged, or transferred within six hours.
Clinical impact
Pilot results indicated that clinicians using Heidi could, on average, see one additional patient per shift. After-shift administrative tasks were reduced by as much as 81%. Feedback from the trial suggested positive effects on workplace satisfaction and an increase in clinicians' capacity to provide direct patient care.
Security and integration
Heidi's system is tailored for the specific needs of New Zealand's clinical language and information systems. The technology includes security protections surrounding patient data and has undergone privacy, cybersecurity, and data sovereignty assessments. The National Artificial Intelligence and Algorithm Expert Advisory Group endorsed the solution after completing reviews aligned with standards for patient confidentiality and digital security.
Stakeholder perspectives
"Healthcare professionals should never have to choose between providing quality patient care and their own wellbeing. Yet the realities of an ED, with complex cases, heavy patient demand, and workforce shortages, can make that a difficult balance.
"Heidi's ability to allow emergency staff to focus more on patient care, whilst providing much-needed relief from administrative burden, we hope will go some way to making that balance easier. This rollout is a major step for New Zealand's emergency teams around the country, and we are excited by the opportunity to collaborate in supporting their communities," said Dr Thomas Kelly, CEO and Co-founder, Heidi Health.
"The feedback from our initial deployments have been very encouraging, with ED clinicians reporting improved workplace satisfaction and the ability to see more patients. At scale, this will have a positive impact on the wellbeing of our clinician whānau, releasing time to care for patients and therefore leading to better health outcomes," said Florian Stroehle, CEO and Co-founder, Hendrix Health.
"While trialling Heidi's AI scribe, we've seen huge benefits for clinicians. They consistently report having better focus on patients and much less administrative burden. Heidi is already making a measurable impact, and scaling it across EDs is a strong step forward in building a more sustainable health system for everyone," said Sonny Taite, Director of Digital Innovation and AI - Health X.