Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched a new solution targeting healthcare software providers .

Dubbed AWS HealthScribe, the solution uses generative artificial intelligence and speech recognition to automatically draft clinical documentation.

According to  Swami Sivasubramanian, AWS’s vice president of database, analytics, and machine-learning services during a keynote speech at AWS Summit New York Wednesday.said“It is clear that generative AI has the power to transform the health-care and life sciences industry in many ways

The service aims to save healthcare workers time using AI-generated transcripts and summaries of patient visits, which can then be entered into the electronic health record system.

 The HealthScribe solution can also extract notable medical terms, medications, and other key details, and physicians can double-check each line of generated text with the original transcript.

Clinical documentation is a major pain point for doctors and nurses. A study funded by the American Medical Association in 2016 found that for every hour a physician spent with a patient, they spent an additional two hours on administrative work. The study said physicians also tend to spend an additional one to two hours doing clerical work outside of working hours, which many in the industry refer to as “pajama time.”

As a result, several companies like Microsoft’s Nuance Communications, and now AWS, have been working to build solutions to reduce this administrative burden.

AWS HealthScribe is powered by Amazon Bedrock, the company’s service for building generative AI applications.

The AWS HealthScribe is compliant with HIPAA and does not retain any customer information. Customers can also choose where they would like to store their clinical documentation.

The cost of the service will vary, as AWS HealthScribe is available on a pay-as-you-go basis. Customers will be charged based on the seconds of audio processed per month.

Currently some organizations are already using HealthScribe, including 3M Health Information Systems. Detlef Koll, 3

The initial use cases for AWS HealthScribe were geared toward general medicine and orthopedics specialties.

 The technology is available in a limited private preview capacity as the company plans to work closely with its customers to determine plans for expanding access. 

According to Tehsin Syed, general manager of health AI at AWS,  the company plans to work closely with its customers to determine plans for expanding access.