To assist healthcare professionals with clinical documentation during consultations, a new tool is being piloted by SingHealth, Singapore’s largest health cluster.

Note Buddy, described as an ambient digital scribe, is able to take notes of patient interactions conducted in the country’s four official languages – English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil. 

The tool, developed by SingHealth’s Division of Digital Strategy, records conversations with patients and transcribes them through speech-to-text software. It then produces structured medical summaries using genAI.

Healthcare IT News paid a visit to the Diabetes & Metabolism Centre at Singapore General Hospital, a tertiary hospital within the SingHealth network, to see Note Buddy in action.

Verbalisation and speech recognition

Dr Goh Su-Yen, Senior Consultant at SGH's Department of Endocrinology, led a demonstration of the tool through a mock patient consult with a member of our team. Our colleague spoke in a mix of English and Tamil. 

Note Buddy produced a raw transcript of the consultation, followed by a summary with clearly defined sections such as medical history, social activities, ongoing symptoms, and even a potential prognosis for the clinician’s review.

However, we observed that the system did not fully capture all the Tamil words spoken because the words were spoken too quickly or used too sparingly. 

Dr Goh said that if a clinician knows a patient's preferred language, they can select that option in Note Buddy. She went on to explain that multiple languages can still be detected and translated by the platform as long as they are spoken clearly in the majority of a sentence. 

The tool also reacts to prompts from the clinician. When our colleague stated that he had “pain in his middle to lower back”, Dr Goh responded with the medical term commonly used to describe that area (i.e., thoracic region). This detail was captured in the medical summary.

Dr Goh pointed out how Note Buddy was able to recognise her as the doctor in the conversation and added that the tool would be able recognise input from other people – such as caregivers – who were also present during the conversation. 

Refinement from clinicians still crucial

We did spot a minor inaccuracy in the summary. For example, the tool included the word “anorexia” in its summary after hearing that our colleague was taking Anarex to manage his back pain. He also mentioned that he was having digestive issues while taking the medication on an empty stomach. 

Dr Goh said that this could have possibly been caused by either the system capturing her advice that “it was always good to eat before painkillers” or the word Anarex not being articulated clearly enough.

She emphasised the need for clear verbalisation and post-consultation checks to optimise Note Buddy. 

“This is why we make sure that clinicians are aware that [Note Buddy] documents conversations only. For a cancer patient, for example, I might have plans such as chemo treatment that were not fully articulated during the session. That’s when I can amend my notes after the consultation,” said Dr Goh.

Improving patient care

SingHealth launched Note Buddy so that healthcare professionals can focus on interactions with patients during clinic consultations and reduce the administration burden that comes with documentation. 

On top of note-taking and multi-language support, the tool’s features also include customisable prompts and secure notes retrieval. Clinicians can only access their own notes to maximise patient data confidentiality, and the platform removes notes from its system after 1 month for routine data protection. 

Dr Goh shared, "Using Note Buddy has allowed me to engage more meaningfully with my patients and reduce the cognitive burden of manually typing out what was discussed. I have found the notes captured by Note Buddy to be accurate. 

“The system can even selectively prioritise and capture the relevant and pertinent pieces of the patient’s medical history. I can now give my patients my full attention during our consultation sessions.” 

Note Buddy is currently accessible across all SingHealth institutions.