Saudi Press

Saudi Arabia and the world
Thursday, Oct 02, 2025

Amazon lets doctors record your conversations and put them in your medical files

Amazon lets doctors record your conversations and put them in your medical files

Amazon is introducing a virtual medical scribe so doctors can spend more time with patients and less time at the computer. Transcribe Medical is being introduced at re:Invent and is available to AWS customers.
AWS says it’s now possible for doctors to get their notes transcribed in real time with a high degree of accuracy.

Amazon’s next big step in health care is with voice transcription technology that’s designed to allow doctors to spend more time with patients and less time at the computer.

At Amazon Web Services’ re:Invent conference on Tuesday, the company is launching a service called Amazon Transcribe Medical, which transcribes doctor-patient interactions and plugs the text straight into the medical record.

“Our overarching goal is to free up the doctor, so they have more attention going to where it should be directed,” said Matt Wood, vice president of artificial intelligence at AWS. “And that’s to the patient.”

At last year’s re:Invent, AWS introduced a related service called Amazon Comprehend Medical, which “allows developers to process unstructured medical text and identify information such as patient diagnosis, treatments, dosages, symptoms and signs, and more,” according to a blog post.

Wood said the two services are linked and can be used together.

Voice-to-text transcription is one of the many areas where Amazon is battling with cloud rivals Microsoft and Google. All three companies operate speech assistants that can in real time translate spoken words and sentences and offer text translation. Businesses can use the technology in a variety of ways to weave into their applications.

AWS’ software is designed so that it can be embedded into any device or an app via an application programming interface, and the customer can store it in the electronic medical record. Users of Microsoft and Google’s cloud can access the technology using APIs. Microsoft Azure is working on similar tools with Nuance, and Google is researching the space with Stanford University.

In the medical sector, many doctors today rely on legacy dictation software that still requires them to spend hours on clinical documentation. Others rely on costly human scribes or will dictate notes into a recorder and then submit the voice files to a third-party transcription service, which can take a few days to return a response. Wood said Amazon’s service even has built-in punctuation, so there’s no need for a doctor to say out loud that a comma should be inserted.

The technology was developed with the help of some AWS customers, including electronic health IT company Cerner and Suki, a venture-backed transcription start-up. Wood said the company created the software because there was a “lot of demand for it.”

As Amazon moves deeper into the $3.5 trillion medical sector, it is juggling working with partners to develop tools on its behalf with potential initiatives that might someday prove competitive to the incumbents.

Amazon is taking aim at the pharmacy supply chain with its PillPack team and is looking to improve health-care services for its employees with Haven, a joint venture with J.P. Morgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway. The company also has a primary care group, Amazon Care.

A big challenge for Amazon, a huge consumer company with tons of customer data, is ensuring that its health-care tools are compliant with privacy rules and regulations under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and when it comes to transcription, maintaining an extremely high level of accuracy to avoid problematic outcomes or potential liability. Imagine, for instance, if the machine learning system inputs the term “hyper” instead of “hypo,” or if doctors noticed so many inaccuracies that they ended up doing the work manually anyway.

Wood said the service is HIPAA eligible, meaning that customers are responsible for ensuring that they’re compliant with patient privacy laws before using the transcription technology. He said it took a lot of work for the technology to correctly annotate the “domain specific language and abbreviations” that are common in the medical field, and added that the accuracy is very high. Amazon hasn’t published research showing how its accuracy compares with other offerings, but Wood said the company hasn’t ruled it out.
Newsletter

Related Articles

Saudi Press
0:00
0:00
Close
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
Nvidia and Abu Dhabi’s TII Launch First AI-&-Robotics Lab in the Middle East
UK, Canada, and Australia Officially Recognise Palestine in Historic Shift
New Eye Drops Show Promise in Replacing Reading Glasses for Presbyopia
Dubai Property Boom Shows Strain as Flippers Get Buyer’s Remorse
Top AI Researchers Are Heading Back to China as U.S. Struggles to Keep Pace
JWST Data Brings TRAPPIST-1e Closer to Earth-Like Habitability
UAE-US Stargate Project Poised to Make Abu Dhabi a Global AI Powerhouse
Trump and Starmer Clash Over UK Recognition of Palestinian State Amid State Visit
Saudi Arabia cracks down on music ‘lounges’ after conservative backlash
Saudi Arabia Signs ‘Strategic Mutual Defence’ Pact with Pakistan, Marking First Arab State to Gain Indirect Access to Nuclear Strike Capabilities in the Region
Sam Altman sells the 'Wedding Estate' in Hawaii for 49 million dollars
Turkish car manufacturer Togg Enters German Market with 5-Star Electric Sedan and SUV to Challenge European EV Brands
World’s Longest Direct Flight China Eastern to Launch 29-Hour Shanghai–Buenos Aires Direct Flight via Auckland in December
New OpenAI Study Finds Majority of ChatGPT Use Is Personal, Not Professional
Kuwait opens bidding for construction of three cities to ease housing crunch.
This Week in AI: Meta’s Superintelligence Push, xAI’s Ten Billion-Dollar Raise, Genesis AI’s Robotics Ambitions, Microsoft Restructuring, Amazon’s Million-Robot Milestone, and Google’s AlphaGenome Update
Indian Student Engineers Propose “Project REBIRTH” to Protect Aircraft from Crashes Using AI, Airbags and Smart Materials
Could AI Nursing Robots Help Healthcare Staffing Shortages?
Turkish authorities seize leading broadcaster amid fraud and tax investigation
Qatari prime minister says Netanyahu ‘killed any hope’ for Israeli hostages
Apple Introduces Ultra-Thin iPhone Air, Enhanced 17 Series and New Health-Focused Wearables
Big Oil Slashes Jobs and Investments Amid Prolonged Low Crude Prices
Social Media Access Curtailed in Turkey After CHP Calls for Rallies Following Police Blockade of Istanbul Headquarters
Did the Houthis disrupt the internet in the Middle East? Submarine cables cut in the Red Sea
Gold Could Reach Nearly $5,000 if Fed Independence Is Undermined, Goldman Sachs Warns
Uruguay, Colombia and Paraguay Secure Places at 2026 World Cup
Trump Administration Advances Plans to Rebrand Pentagon as Department of War Instead of the Fake Term Department of Defense
Tether Expands into Gold Sector with Profit-Driven Diversification
Trump’s New War – and the ‘Drug Tyrant’ Fearing Invasion: ‘1,200 Missiles Aimed at Us’
At the Parade in China: Laser Weapons, 'Eagle Strike,' and a Missile Capable of 'Striking Anywhere in the World'
Information Warfare in the Age of AI: How Language Models Become Targets and Tools
Israeli Airstrike in Yemen Kills Houthi Prime Minister
After the Shock of Defeat, Iranians Yearn for Change
YouTube Altered Content by Artificial Intelligence – Without Permission
Iran Faces Escalating Water Crisis as Protests Spread
More Than Half a Million Evacuated as Typhoon Kajiki Heads for Vietnam
HSBC Switzerland Ends Relationships with Over 1,000 Clients from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Qatar, and Egypt
Sharia Law Made Legally Binding in Austria Despite Warnings Over 'Incompatible' Values
Dogfights in the Skies: Airbus on Track to Overtake Boeing and Claim Aviation Supremacy
Tim Cook Promises an AI Revolution at Apple: "One of the Most Significant Technologies of Our Generation"
Are AI Data Centres the Infrastructure of the Future or the Next Crisis?
Miles Worth Billions: How Airlines Generate Huge Profits
Zelenskyy Returns to White House Flanked by European Allies as Trump Pressures Land-Swap Deal with Putin
Beijing is moving into gold and other assets, diversifying away from the dollar
Cristiano Ronaldo Makes Surprise Stop at New Hong Kong Museum
Zelenskyy to Visit Washington after Trump–Putin Summit Yields No Agreement
×