Emergency doctors at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Adelaide are trialling an AI scribe that listens to patient consultations and drafts the clinical notes, part of a South Australian push to claw back the hours clinicians lose to paperwork.
The tool, run by the Central Adelaide Local Health Network (CALHN), uses a small microphone to transcribe conversations between consenting patients and their treating clinician, then turns the exchange into structured notes and discharge letters. It is one of two AI scribe trials the Malinauskas Government has launched across the state’s public hospitals.
Around 500 patients are expected to take part in the CALHN research phase, running about six weeks across the hospital’s emergency department and the nearby Sefton Park Urgent Care Hub, according to the network’s own announcement.
A locally built tool, trained on SA Health data
Unlike the commercial products sweeping through private clinics, the CALHN scribe was purpose-built and trained on SA Health data, developed with the Australian Institute for Machine Learning (AIML) and the Commission on Excellence and Innovation in Health.
The build was funded through Health Translation SA and the Health Services Charitable Gifts Board, and sits within a broader $28 million Digital Investment Fund allocation in the state budget.
Dr Emily Kirkpatrick, a senior clinical lecturer at AIML, said the aim was to free doctors, nurses and allied health teams to spend more time with patients while cutting their administrative load, in comments reported by The Indian Sun.
The emergency department version has been tailored to that setting, with features such as automated discharge letters. CALHN says the goal is to reduce ramping and smooth the path to follow-up care. Dr Michael Edmonds heads the emergency unit at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, one of the first sites to test the technology.
CALHN executive director for strategy and digital, Elena Dicus, confirmed the 500-patient research scope. Transcripts generated by the tool are checked against traditional notes, and the network says early patient feedback has been positive, with people valuing more eye contact and engagement during appointments.
The second trial: a commercial system for women and children
The parallel trial runs at the Women’s and Children’s Health Network (WCHN), where a commercially available scribe, developed by Australian clinicians, is being tested in Child Development Unit outpatient clinics.
Dr Melissa McCradden, WCHN’s director of artificial intelligence, said the trial would test whether AI can support clinical staff while maintaining the documentation standards the institution is accountable for, in remarks carried by Glam Adelaide.
Running the two side by side, one home-grown and one off-the-shelf, gives SA Health a rare chance to compare a sovereign build against the commercial market before committing to anything permanent.
Health Minister Chris Picton framed the effort cautiously. He said that if the trials prove successful, AI scribes could be a “real game-changer” for administrative workload, but stressed the technology was being tested under strict controls to ensure it was safe, secure and accurate.
Assistant Minister for Artificial Intelligence and the Digital Economy Michael Brown said less admin should mean more care delivered, faster.
Why it matters
Administrative work eats roughly 20 per cent of a typical doctor’s day, and up to 40 per cent of Australian GPs already lean on digital transcription. Emergency departments, where ramping has become a chronic political sore point in Adelaide, are where those minutes matter most.
The sovereignty angle is the sharper story. By training a scribe on SA Health data and building it with a local research institute, the state is testing whether a public health system can own its own clinical AI rather than renting capability from overseas vendors, keeping sensitive patient data and the underlying model inside Australian jurisdiction.
That is a meaningful contrast with the wider market. Across the Tasman, as RNZ reported, Health New Zealand has bought 1,000 licences for the Australian-built Heidi scribe after trials cut documentation from 17 minutes to about four minutes per note, letting clinicians see roughly one extra patient per shift. Those are the kinds of numbers SA will be watching.
For local industry, a working sovereign scribe would be a proof point for AIML and the state’s health-tech sector, and a template other states could licence rather than import.
The caveats clinicians are raising
The enthusiasm is not universal, and the risks are real in a high-pressure ED. Otago University bio-ethicist Professor Angela Ballantyne told RNZ that documentation errors could have a “catastrophic impact on patient safety”, citing a case where a tool changed “first time in the morning” to “every morning”, a small slip with potentially serious clinical consequences.
Dr Kate Allan of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine’s New Zealand faculty was more upbeat about the technology’s summarising power, but warned that AI “hallucinates” and that outputs must always be verified by the clinician.
Those cautions matter because emergency clinicians are, by several accounts, keen to get their hands on the tools. Healthcare IT News has reported strong appetite among public emergency staff to trial ambient scribes, which raises the stakes on getting the safeguards right before any wider rollout.
What happens next
SA Health says the results will inform whether the scribes are integrated permanently and expanded to more emergency and urgent care settings. The trials sit alongside a draft AI use policy released for public consultation, and both operate within existing SA Health data-protection frameworks, with patient consent required and transcripts audited against standard notes.
The measure of success will be simple enough: fewer hours at the keyboard, no drop in note quality, and no safety surprises. If Adelaide’s home-built scribe clears that bar, expect the sovereign-versus-commercial question to shape how the rest of Australia’s public hospitals adopt AI at the bedside.
Sources: Central Adelaide Local Health Network, The Indian Sun, Glam Adelaide, RNZ, Healthcare IT News.
