The federal health department has raised concerns about the use of AI scribes by doctors as the health regulator considers the need for safeguards around the technology.
AI scribe tools record, transcribe and summarise conversations between doctors and patients for medical notes, and have boomed in popularity in the past 18 months.
According to an online poll by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP), use of AI scribes by doctors in Australia nearly doubled from 22% in August 2024 to 40% in November 2025.
Companies offering the technology to practitioners say it has been used hundreds of millions of times across the globe in the past 18 months alone as doctors seek to ease the administrative burden of patient consultations.
The federal health department has identified concerns about the growing use of the technology. In February 2026 Senate estimates briefing documents, obtained by Guardian Australia under freedom of information laws, the department noted AI scribes “have little oversight” and raised concerns about the use of such tools in healthcare settings.
Digital scribes are classified as “medical devices” – and therefore regulated by the Therapeutic Goods Act – only if they serve a therapeutic purpose.
“Anecdotally, some are marketed as outside regulatory levers (e.g., not a medical device) or as privacy‑compliant, often with limited transparency,” the department said. “Some suppliers may be unaware their cloud platforms send data outside Australia, raising risks for patient data security.”
The department said some suppliers advertised a 30% revenue increase for health professionals with no additional hours or patient consultations, “which has implications for [Medicare Benefits Scheme] costs”.
In an April briefing document from the department’s AI advisory group, it was noted that AI scribes could improve clinicians’ productivity and potentially reduce their burnout, but were subject to the same limitations as other large language models in terms of quality and accuracy.
“This has implications for patient safety, clinical accountability, and the integrity of data held within national digital health infrastructure.”
The department also noted there was a significant variation in how clinicians and practices obtained consent from patients for the use of the scribes.
“Our position is that informed consent requires consumers to understand the benefits and limitations of the technology to which they are consenting.”
Dr Elizabeth Deveny, the chief executive of the Consumer Health Forum, said the documents showed consumers and the government were raising the same questions about the technology.
“It is good that the department has identified these as key issues. The next question is really whether the current safeguards are strong enough and consistent enough in day-to-day practice,” she said.
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“If [scribes] save clinicians time … the public deserves to know if that time means better care, better access, or if it just means more billable activity, which doesn’t help us with the burnout issue.”
Guardian Australia has previously reported concerns from patients about doctors not seeking adequate consent when using the AI tools. In Melbourne, one psychiatrist refused to accept patients who would not consent to use of an AI scribe.
Deveny said the forum was increasingly hearing from patients who had been told they would need to find a different provider if they did not give consent for the use of AI scribes.
In Australia, the oversight of AI scribes is handled by a patchwork of regulators, including the Therapeutic Goods Administration, Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra) and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.
The TGA has been undertaking a review of digital scribes in Australia, partly to determine whether they should be classed as medical devices and subject to oversight, with the report due in coming months, a spokesperson for the health department said.
“The TGA is working with industry associations and individual companies to ensure regulatory requirements are understood, and we plan to publish a summary of the outcomes from the review in coming months,” the spokesperson said.
The privacy commissioner, Carly Kind, said in a speech in May that her office had been “tracking closely” the rollout of AI scribe technology, meeting with the RACGP ethics committee and scribe technology providers.
“We continue to engage with civil society organisations concerned about the rollout of scribes, the deficiencies in GPs’ implementation of AI scribe consent protocols, and the absence of disclosure around scribes in privacy policies,” she said.
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