xRead - Incorporating Artificial Intelligence into Clinical Practice (March 2026)

Ng et al. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making

(2025) 25:236

Page 12 of 24

Improving accuracy in identifying relevant information in clinical narratives was a key focus; this could involve better informa

Key Findings Novel Features

tion extraction techniques for categorizing free-form speech into structured formats. The study suggests further testing with real-world clinical scenarios to ensure robustness.

The study highlighted the high error rates associated with SR, particularly for complex clinical tasks, recommending

further improvements in SR technology to reduce errors caused by misinterpretation of clinical terms. It was noted that current SR systems

were not optimally integrated with EHR systems, leading to workflow inefficiencies and errors.

Precision 0.794 WER (mean) 0.43 NR Cascaded SR and IE to fill out a hando ver form for clinical proofing and 0.759 Recall 0.929 0.653

sign-off provide a way to make clinical documentation more effective and efficient;also improves accessibility

and availability of existing documents in clinical judgment, situational-aware ness, and decision making.

Using SR for clinical documenta tion was significantly slower, with

task completion times being 18.11% longer compared to using KBM. SR also resulted in a higher number of

errors, with 390 errors observed in SR compared to 245 in KBM, including er

rors with potential patient harm. While task interruptions did not significantly impact performance, the increased

error rates and slower documentation times highlight safety and efficiency concerns with SR in its current form​.

AI Transcription

Proficiency (paper

specific outcomes)

NR Mean task completion time (s) 112.38 131.44 170.48 201.84

Potential for patient

harm (major errors) 2 29 11 21

Typographical errors 142 133 71 119

Metric (F1 score, F1 0.856

Precision, Recall, WER) 0.702

Gold standard - Irrelevant text

- Macro-averaged

over 35 nonempty categories in a form

Gold standard - Simple task Key

board and Mouse (KBM)

- Simple task SR

- Complex task KBM

- Complex task SR

Comparator Type Subcategories Performance

Standard

Original written, free-form text

documents by

the registered nurse

Standardized

version of a

commercial

electronic health record system

Table 2 (continued)

Study Reference Suom inen et

al., 2015 [15]

Hodgson et al.,

2017

[16]