AI tools in general practice

There has been a significant level of interest by general practice in using Nabla Copilot (and similar AI tools) to reduce the amount of time GPs and other practitioners spend on writing up consultations, and it has recently been announced a Nabla Copilot plugin will be integrated into several major practice management systems (PMSs).

Nabla Copilot is an AI assistant product designed to ease the workload on medical practitioners developed by Nabla, a French digital health startup. Nabla Copilot captures an audio recording of a medical consultation between a practitioner and a patient and uses a combination of speech-to-text transcription and large language models (LLMs) to produce a structured medical note that can be exported directly into a patient’s medical records.

Privacy impact assessment

A privacy impact assessment (PIA) is linked below and seeks to investigate the potential privacy risks of implementing Nabla Copilot in this form from the perspective of Pinnacle, on behalf of its member practices.

Obtaining consent

Obtaining explicit patient consent for using an AI assistant in consultations is essential. A basic consent form for Nabla Copilot as a starting point is provided in the resources below, and for more detailed and comprehensive consent information, please refer to section Risk Management-001 of the PIA (R-001). We encourage practices to tailor the consent language to suit your practice and patient population.

Other resources

Linked below you'll find suggested resources to help practices if they choose to implement Nabla Copilot.

The practice poster, practice consent, and GP-to-patient consent were developed by Nabla as a starting point for practices that use Nabla Copilot. The resources would need to be adapted by practices that use other tools, and practices are advised to still do their due diligence on software they use at their practice.

This web page, 'AI in primary care group' provides easy access to AI webinars and resources.