Exclusive: Patients identify errors in consultation transcripts that are missed by GPs, Healthwatch England finds

AI technology that listens to and transcribes patients’ consultations with doctors can put them at risk by getting the names of drugs and illnesses wrong, an NHS watchdog has warned.

In one case a woman was left badly shaken when the AI scribe’s summary of her conversation wrongly said she had demyelination – serious nerve damage that can lead to multiple sclerosis.

It was only when the patient, an NHS health professional, queried the AI tool’s record of the result of her MRI scan that the hospital corrected it to what it should have been – “null demyelination”.

“This was eventually corrected but was a very traumatising experience to be given an incorrect diagnosis because of AI and then be told it’s a typo,” said the woman, who asked not to be named.

Healthwatch England has highlighted the case and other mistakes by AI scribes to show that the technology, which the NHS is rolling out rapidly, is a potential threat to patient safety. Unless detected, errors could end up in patients’ medical records and affect their care, it said.

In another case, an AI scribe confused the drug the GP had prescribed with a different one of a similar name – a blunder which again the patient, rather than the doctor, identified. On another occasion an AI-generated summary letter did not say that the hospital consultant had told the patient to seek a repeat prescription from their GP for their migraine, which could have left them unable to get their medication.

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