Canada Health Infoway, a non-profit organization funded by the federal government, has opened enrollment for its artificial intelligence (AI) Scribe Program to eligible primary care clinicians across Canada.
The AI Scribe Program aims to use AI to help clinicians reduce administrative burden and improve documentation workflows. To do this, the initiative is providing up to 10,000 fully funded, one-year licences for AI-powered documentation tools, such as scribes to take automated notes, procured from Canadian tech companies.
These companies include Vancouver-based Autochart.ai (by Aya Health Technologies) and Empathia AI, Montréal-based MEDFAR, Calgary’s Mikata Health, and Toronto-based Pippen AI, ScribeBerry, and Tali AI.
Vancouver-based digital healthcare company Well Health Technologies is also well represented. On top of being one of the procured companies itself, so is Mutuo Health Solutions, a Toronto-based company recently acquired by Healwell AI. Earlier this year, Well exercised call options to gain a majority controlling interest in Healwell.
RELATED: Well Health says its healthy Q1 revenue is a symptom of Canadian growth
Infoway said the vendors were selected through a “rigorous process” based on their ability to meet national standards and regional needs, support secure data sharing, meet clinical practice requirements, and align with its Shared Pan-Canadian Interoperability Roadmap, which aims to link all care sectors, organizations, and providers through health technology and standardized data.
Eligible primary care clinicians can now register for AI healthtech from these companies on the AI Scribe Program website by selecting their province or territory to determine which of the tools are available in their area. At the moment, the AI Scribe Program isn’t open to the Northwest Territories or Nunavut.
“AI scribes are just the beginning, and getting this right is key to building a stronger, smarter, and more sustainable health system for the future,” Infoway’s executive vice-president of connected care, Abhi Kalra, said in a statement.
Concerns remain about the propensity of large-language models to generate unwanted or incorrect outputs (called hallucinations) in a medical context. A 2024 unreviewed study conducted by researchers from University of Massachusetts Amherst and the startup Mendel AI found that medical AI products powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Meta’s Llama-3 both hallucinated in “almost all” medical record summaries.
Future phases of the program aim to explore scalability, incorporate discrete data elements, and AI-assisted decision support, Infoway said.
Feature mage courtesy National Cancer Institute via Unsplash.