Beautiful Virgin Islands

Tuesday, Jun 03, 2025

Amazon lets doctors record your conversations and put them in your medical files

Amazon lets doctors record your conversations and put them in your medical files

Amazon is introducing a virtual medical scribe so doctors can spend more time with patients and less time at the computer. Transcribe Medical is being introduced at re:Invent and is available to AWS customers.
AWS says it’s now possible for doctors to get their notes transcribed in real time with a high degree of accuracy.

Amazon’s next big step in health care is with voice transcription technology that’s designed to allow doctors to spend more time with patients and less time at the computer.

At Amazon Web Services’ re:Invent conference on Tuesday, the company is launching a service called Amazon Transcribe Medical, which transcribes doctor-patient interactions and plugs the text straight into the medical record.

“Our overarching goal is to free up the doctor, so they have more attention going to where it should be directed,” said Matt Wood, vice president of artificial intelligence at AWS. “And that’s to the patient.”

At last year’s re:Invent, AWS introduced a related service called Amazon Comprehend Medical, which “allows developers to process unstructured medical text and identify information such as patient diagnosis, treatments, dosages, symptoms and signs, and more,” according to a blog post.

Wood said the two services are linked and can be used together.

Voice-to-text transcription is one of the many areas where Amazon is battling with cloud rivals Microsoft and Google. All three companies operate speech assistants that can in real time translate spoken words and sentences and offer text translation. Businesses can use the technology in a variety of ways to weave into their applications.

AWS’ software is designed so that it can be embedded into any device or an app via an application programming interface, and the customer can store it in the electronic medical record. Users of Microsoft and Google’s cloud can access the technology using APIs. Microsoft Azure is working on similar tools with Nuance, and Google is researching the space with Stanford University.

In the medical sector, many doctors today rely on legacy dictation software that still requires them to spend hours on clinical documentation. Others rely on costly human scribes or will dictate notes into a recorder and then submit the voice files to a third-party transcription service, which can take a few days to return a response. Wood said Amazon’s service even has built-in punctuation, so there’s no need for a doctor to say out loud that a comma should be inserted.

The technology was developed with the help of some AWS customers, including electronic health IT company Cerner and Suki, a venture-backed transcription start-up. Wood said the company created the software because there was a “lot of demand for it.”

As Amazon moves deeper into the $3.5 trillion medical sector, it is juggling working with partners to develop tools on its behalf with potential initiatives that might someday prove competitive to the incumbents.

Amazon is taking aim at the pharmacy supply chain with its PillPack team and is looking to improve health-care services for its employees with Haven, a joint venture with J.P. Morgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway. The company also has a primary care group, Amazon Care.

A big challenge for Amazon, a huge consumer company with tons of customer data, is ensuring that its health-care tools are compliant with privacy rules and regulations under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and when it comes to transcription, maintaining an extremely high level of accuracy to avoid problematic outcomes or potential liability. Imagine, for instance, if the machine learning system inputs the term “hyper” instead of “hypo,” or if doctors noticed so many inaccuracies that they ended up doing the work manually anyway.

Wood said the service is HIPAA eligible, meaning that customers are responsible for ensuring that they’re compliant with patient privacy laws before using the transcription technology. He said it took a lot of work for the technology to correctly annotate the “domain specific language and abbreviations” that are common in the medical field, and added that the accuracy is very high. Amazon hasn’t published research showing how its accuracy compares with other offerings, but Wood said the company hasn’t ruled it out.
Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
Harvard Urges US to Unfreeze Funds for Public Health Research
Businessman Mauled by Lion at Luxury Namibian Lodge
Researchers Consider New Destinations Beyond the U.S.
53-Year-Old Doctor Claims Biological Age of 23
Trump Struggles to Secure Trade Deals With China and Europe
Russia to Return 6,000 Corpses Under Ukraine Prisoner Swap Deal
Microsoft Lays Off Hundreds More Amid Restructuring
Harvey Weinstein’s Publicist Embraces Notoriety
Macron and Meloni Seek Unity Despite Tensions
Trump Administration Accused of Obstructing Deportation Cases
Newark Mayor Sues Over Arrest at Immigration Facility
Center-Left Candidate Projected to Win South Korean Presidency
Trump’s Tariffs Predicted to Stall Global Economic Growth
South Korea’s President-Elect Expected to Take Softer Line on Trump and North Korea
Trump’s China Strategy Remains a Geopolitical Puzzle
Ukraine Executes Long-Range Drone Strikes on Russian Airbases
Conservative Karol Nawrocki wins Poland’s presidential election
Study Identifies Potential Radicalization Risk Among Over One Million Muslims in Germany
Good news: Annalena Baerbock Elected President of the UN General Assembly
Apple Appeals EU Law Over User Data Sharing Requirements
South Africa: "First Black Bank" Collapses after Being Looted by Owners
Poland will now withdraw from the EU migration pact after pro-Trump nationalist wins Election
"That's Disgusting, Don’t Say It Again": The Trump Joke That Made the President Boil
Trump Cancels NASA Nominee Over Democratic Donations
Paris Saint-Germain's Greatest Triumph Is Football’s Lowest Point
OnlyFans for Sale: From Lockdown Lifeline to Eight-Billion-Dollar Empire
Mayor’s Security Officer Implicated | Shocking New Details Emerge in NYC Kidnapping Case
Hegseth Warns of Potential Chinese Military Action Against Taiwan
OPEC+ Agrees to Increase Oil Output for Third Consecutive Month
Jamie Dimon Warns U.S. Bond Market Faces Pressure from Rising Debt
Turkey Detains Istanbul Officials Amid Anti-Corruption Crackdown
Taylor Swift Gains Ownership of Her First Six Albums
Bangkok Ranked World's Top City for Remote Work in 2025
Satirical Sketch Sparks Political Spouse Feud in South Korea
Indonesia Quarry Collapse Leaves Multiple Dead and Missing
South Korean Election Video Pulled Amid Misogyny Outcry
Asian Economies Shift Away from US Dollar Amid Trade Tensions
Netflix Investigates Allegations of On-Set Mistreatment in K-Drama Production
US Defence Chief Reaffirms Strong Ties with Singapore Amid Regional Tensions
Vietnam Faces Strategic Dilemma Over China's Mekong River Projects
Malaysia's First AI Preacher Sparks Debate on Islamic Principles
White House Press Secretary Criticizes Harvard Funding, Advocates for Vocational Training
France to Implement Nationwide Smoking Ban in Outdoor Spaces Frequented by Children
Meta and Anduril Collaborate on AI-Driven Military Augmented Reality Systems
Russia's Fossil Fuel Revenues Approach €900 Billion Since Ukraine Invasion
U.S. Justice Department Reduces American Bar Association's Role in Judicial Nominations
U.S. Department of Energy Unveils 'Doudna' Supercomputer to Advance AI Research
U.S. SEC Dismisses Lawsuit Against Binance Amid Regulatory Shift
Alcohol Industry Faces Increased Scrutiny Amid Health Concerns
Italy Faces Population Decline Amid Youth Emigration
×