Aaron Maguregui on AI Scribes in Health Care – 'Technically, it's a third party listening'
Foley & Lardner LLP partner Aaron Maguregui shared insights on the growing applications for artificial intelligence across health care in the healthleaders article, “Is Your AI Scribe HIPAA-Compliant?“
“Technically, it’s a third party listening into the conversation,” Maguregui said of AI scribes, a popular tool which can help reduce administrative burdens on health care providers.
Maguregui explained that as an AI scribe is essentially a service provider, a health care provider using it requires a Business Associate Agreement. “There might be some [doctors] that are already enjoying the scribe and you just don’t know about it,” he continued, noting the possibility of an unauthorized disclosure of protected health information.
“Specificity counts, and specificity is what we’re looking to get to with respect to AI,” he added. “We want AI to give specific answers. We want it to be nuanced. Those nuances are going to have to at some point start to take into account identifiable information in order to glean cohorts and cultural differences and social determinants of health, things that we probably want to learn. We want to understand these concepts. But we also need to make sure that we’re being cautious with people’s privacy rights.”
Maguregui and partner Jennifer Hennessey assess potential HIPAA compliance risks further in this Foley blog cited in the article.
