• Posted December 4, 2025

Background AI Scribe Can Help Doctors During Patient Visits

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools that "eavesdrop" on patient visits can significantly cut down on doctors’ paperwork burden, a new study says.

Doctors using a AI scribe software to help document office visits cut their paperwork time by nearly 10%, researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine AI.

"Documentation burden has become a major contributor to physician burnout, with doctors often spending two hours on paperwork for every hour of patient care,” lead researcher Dr. Paul Lukac, chief AI officer at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Health, said in a news release.

"This is the first randomized trial to rigorously evaluate whether AI scribes deliver on their promise to help address this problem,” Lukac said.

For the study, researchers randomly assigned 238 doctors across 14 specialties to use one of two different AI scribes — Microsoft DAX or Nabla — or to continue taking notes as usual during office visits.

The AI scribes record patient conversations and automatically create draft clinical notes, which physicians review and edit before entering into the patient’s record, researchers said.

The doctors had about 72,000 patient encounters during a two-month period in late 2024, the study says.

Nabla in particular helped doctors by cutting documentation time by an estimated 41 seconds versus 18 seconds among docs jotting down their own notes.

Those using DAX had a smaller decrease in note-taking tame that wasn’t significantly better than that of the control group.

However, both AI tools helped doctors in terms of burnout, workload and work exhaustion, based on responses from the docs themselves.

For example, doctors provided the AI assistance had about 7% less burnout than those in the control group.

But the AI software is far from perfect. Doctors reported that AI-generated notes occasionally contained significant inaccuracies, most often omitting important information.

“This technology requires active physician oversight, not passive acceptance," senior researcher Dr. John Mafi, a UCLA Health internist, said in a news release.

"Our trial revealed that while AI scribes deliver measurable benefits, they occasionally generate clinically significant inaccuracies,” Mafi said. “Physicians must remain vigilant in reviewing AI-generated documentation. The path forward requires embracing innovation while maintaining medicine’s fundamental commitment to patient safety through rigorous evaluation and ongoing monitoring."

More information

The World Economic Forum has more on AI in health care.

SOURCE: UCLA, news release, Dec. 2, 2025