Doctors’ soaring use of AI scribes prompts Australian government warning over privacy

The brief

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…