AI Zero Contact: Pioneering Voice-Enabled Medical Records at Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Collaboration with Taiwan AI Labs

2021.10.20

October 20, 2021 - Kaohsiung, Taiwan

In response to the challenges posed by the ongoing pandemic, Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital(高雄長庚醫院) has partnered with Taiwan AI Labs to develop an innovative AI Zero Contact intelligent input system. This groundbreaking system allows healthcare professionals at the forefront of emergency and epidemic clinics to input clinical information using voice commands, ensuring the accurate recording of patients' symptoms, medical history, and relevant data even when their hands are occupied. The system seamlessly integrates with the hospital's medical records system and infectious disease reporting system, streamlining healthcare processes and enhancing efficiency. Currently operational in the emergency room and screening stations of Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, the technology is set to be expanded to other medical facilities within the Chang Gung network.

During the height of the pandemic in May, the surge in patients at emergency and epidemic clinics placed significant demands on healthcare professionals. Physicians, after conducting multiple screenings, faced the challenge of transcribing medical records for numerous patients consecutively, a task that strained their memory and increased the risk of errors. Additionally, the use of protective clothing and gloves in epidemic clinics made traditional keyboard input impractical.

In response to these challenges, Taiwan AI Labs proactively formed a technology epidemic prevention project team. Collaborating with Dr. Chiu Yi-Min(邱義閔醫師) of the Emergency Department at Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, the team leveraged mature voice recognition technology to create a voice-enabled medical records system tailored for epidemic prevention clinics. This system allows healthcare professionals to provide real-time voice inputs, recording patients' clinical information accurately and efficiently. Moreover, it integrates seamlessly with the hospital's medical records system and infectious disease reporting system, reducing the burden on healthcare professionals and facilitating the one-click reporting of infectious diseases.

President Wang Jyh-Hsiung(王植熙) of Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital highlighted the hospital's active use of big data and AI to elevate healthcare quality. The forthcoming big data center aims to lay solid groundwork for "precision health" and "AI joint learning." Precision health involves predicting, preventing, diagnosing, and treating diseases accurately based on individual genetics, environment, lifestyle, and molecular differences. This is achieved through interdisciplinary collaboration with the technology industry. In recent years, Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital has invested in various aspects of precision health, including AI-assisted interpretation of electrocardiograms, ultrasound, and X-ray images, as well as the AI Zero Contact voice-enabled spoken medical history input. AI joint learning is a crucial foundation for precision health, developing AI models through collaboration across multiple organizations while avoiding the need to share confidential clinical data or information.

Regarding the future development of voice-enabled medical histories, President Wang Jyh-Hsiung stated that physicians will continue to collaborate with Taiwan AI Labs to develop "spoken examination report input." This involves further training AI in natural language voice recognition and understanding medical examination content through dialogue. This process enables the automatic extraction of important information from conversations to create electronic medical records. Simultaneously, the gathered information assists clinical physicians in diagnosis and risk classification, enhancing the quality of medical record transcription and clinical care safety.

Ethan Tu(杜奕瑾), the founder of Taiwan AI Labs, emphasized that as the post-pandemic era approaches, incorporating AI innovation and continually improving hospital processes to enhance the prediction and prevention of human health is the trend in precision health development. Taiwan AI Labs has dedicated substantial resources to assist in technological epidemic prevention since the outbreak of COVID-19, resulting in achievements such as the Taiwan Social Distancing App, misinformation prevention, automatic detection system for COVID-19 chest X-rays, virus strain tracing platform, repurposing existing drugs, and the pubmedKB medical knowledge graph.

The Kaohsiung City Government has actively organized the "Kaohsiung Joint Learning Smart Healthcare Alliance" since the beginning of this year. This alliance promotes collaboration between the four major medical centers in the city and Taiwan AI Labs to create a framework for AI joint learning. Through collaborative sharing of AI precision health results, it aims to drive the development of Kaohsiung's smart healthcare industry and the practical application of AI in clinical settings. Mayor Chen Chi-Mai(陳其邁) emphasized that joint learning requires research collaboration across organizations and hospitals. The city government's goal is not only to develop joint learning in the healthcare industry but also to use healthcare as a starting point to create an AI healthcare industry cluster in southern Taiwan. Mayor Chen Chi-Mai expressed satisfaction with Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital's collaboration with AI Labs in developing touchless spoken medical histories, believing that there will be more AI-enabled applications in Kaohsiung, continuously contributing to clinical practice. The Kaohsiung City Government will continue to play a supportive role, striving to secure strong resources from both national and private sectors to create a better environment for the industry and assist in the development of new smart technologies in Kaohsiung.

About Taiwan AI Labs (台灣人工智慧實驗室)
Established in 2017, Taiwan AI Labs is the first nonprofit artificial intelligence research organization in Asia. It encourages the development of internationally trustworthy research outcomes using open algorithms, source code, and federated learning. In 2020, it established the Joint Learning Industry Alliance to drive the rapid development of industry-grounded verification mechanisms, preventing potential bias and harm from AI algorithms. In 2020, the organization represented participants in the GPAI international organization, showcasing joint federal learning achievements, receiving recognition from international organizations. Research areas span across smart healthcare, smart cities, tourism and transportation, finance, and human-machine interface applications. The underlying AI technologies used include natural language processing, computer vision, and deep learning. For more information, please visit Taiwan AI Labs' website at https://ailabs.tw/ or follow their latest updates on the Facebook page at Taiwan AI Labs.