Patients before paperwork: Leveraging AI as a tool in primary care

Jun 23, 2025 by Elliott Wong

The numbers for family medicine paint a bleak picture.

•     By 2026, it is estimated that 4.4 million people in Ontario (one in four) will be without a family doctor.

•     A survey from the Ontario College of Family Physicians reveals that 65 per cent of family doctors are preparing to leave or reduce their hours within the next five years.

•     A survey of 1,300 family doctors in Ontario indicated that 94 per cent feel overwhelmed with administrative and clerical tasks as paperwork takes up to 40 per cent of their time.

•     Rates of burnout and mental exhaustion among family physicians are at an all-time high.

•     A lack of interest in family medicine among medical school graduates has left 100 unfilled family medicine residency spots since 2023.

Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), however, offer a way for family physicians to reduce administrative burden and burnout while fostering patient-centered care.

AI systems are computer algorithms and techniques that can perform complex cognitive tasks. For example, machine learning models learn without being explicitly instructed. CHARTwatch, an AI early warning system developed by St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, utilizes real-time patient vitals and laboratory results to predict in-hospital death and ICU admission, reducing unanticipated mortality by 26 per cent.

Ongoing research and analytical estimates suggest that full-deployment of AI applications could reduce Canadian health-care spending by 4.5-8 per cent a year without negatively impacting patient outcomes.

The implementation of natural language processing (NLP)– a subset of AI – such as AI scribes and Clinical Decision Support (CDS) tools that enable computers and digital devices to recognize, understand, interpret and generate text and speech in primary care will help reduce the administrative burden through (i) automated inbox triaging and management, (ii) streamlined clinical documentation, (iii) adjunctive tools that provide individualized diagnostics and management of chronic conditions along with (iv) ease of access to up-to-date evidence-based clinical guidelines.

AI scribes can help family physicians spend more time with patients while spending less time on clinical documentation. Conversations between physicians, patients and families can be captured and summarized in real-time, freeing physicians to devote more time to face-to-face patient interactions.

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