AI System Accurately Reads Doctors' Written Notes, Unlocking Vast Medical Data for Research
Researchers from RespondHealth, Drexel University, Stanford University, the University of Miami, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have developed an AI system capable of accurately reading and analyzing doctors' handwritten clinical notes at scale. Published in Nature Medicine, this system converts narrative text into computable data, linking every extracted fact back to its original sentence. This innovation addresses a long-standing challenge in medical research, as a significant portion of patient information, including crucial details about patient coping mechanisms, side effects, and medication changes, resides in these previously inaccessible written notes. The system achieved a 99.4% accuracy rate in a combined measure of correctness and completeness when compared against an adjudicated standard set by board-certified physicians. This level of accuracy is particularly noteworthy given that physicians themselves agreed on 94.7% of statements they reviewed...