Whilst it’s increasingly common for telehealth platforms to offer the ability to record your consultation so that it can be referred back to at a later date, it’s much less common to do likewise with physical consultations.  It’s a trend that is increasing however, as a recent paper published in the BMJ argues.

It’s a trend that shows enormous potential, the authors argue, but it does raise questions about how such data should be collected, managed and stored.

The paper says that roughly 10% of patients have recorded their consultation, usually using a smartphone.  Whilst most of these instances are patients taking the initiative, a growing number of healthcare providers are offering this as a service to patients.  By doing this, they take the security and data governance of the recording into their own hands.

Digitizing patient records

The move towards digitally transcribing consultations is part of a wider trend towards the digitization of patient records.  It’s a shift that the authors believe will underpin the evolution of healthcare.

“A simple cellphone recording enables a patient to better remember important information or to share it with family members,” they say, “but ‘next-generation’ professionally produced recordings can be used to develop and further patient and family engagement, shared decision making, education, and research.”

I’ve written previously about the administrative burden that taking accurate notes has on doctors, with many citing this as the main cause of burnout.  It’s a burden that the authors believe digital recordings can largely lift, with the benefit of not only reducing stress levels among doctors but giving them some of the 50% of their time that they currently spend on administration back to deal with patients.

The technology is not without issues however, with the paper highlighting areas such as privacy, consent and cyber security.  As yet there is no clear regulatory or legal reform in the area, despite high profile mis-steps, such as that involving Google DeepMind.

“We’re going to need to create a new model of personal health data ownership, similar to banking records,” the authors conclude. “But, even if we did that, there are still implications for privacy and cybersecurity; and the question is do we want to leave that solely in the hands of for-profit companies?”

It’s a practice that is only likely to increase, and the paper makes an interesting read for any practitioner looking to go down this path.