Where AI Scribes Break Today
AI scribes are scaling rapidly—but “good enough” documentation can introduce real clinical, legal, and equity risk, especially in specialty and complex care.
Improving the Input: FirstHx
FirstHx addresses this at the source by improving the clinical context fed into a scribe. Patients complete adaptive, evidence-based clinical interviews before the visit, generating structured, longitudinal histories that reduce reliance on incomplete, real-time conversations and allow clinicians to focus on diagnosis and treatment.
Improving Interpretation: CAMH
At the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), the first enterprise AI scribe customized for mental health and addictions deployed in Canada shows where current approaches break—cross-organizational data leakage, missed suicide risk, incomplete mental status capture, loss of non-verbal context, and failure to reflect cultural nuance.
What This Could Enable
Together, these approaches point to a potential shift in integrated care. By combining structured pre-visit histories with AI that can interpret complex conversations, documentation could become more complete and longitudinal—helping clinicians better identify patterns, reduce misattribution, and make more coordinated decisions across mental and physical health.
Cross-Sector Perspective
This session brings CAMH and FirstHx’s unaffiliated work together for the first time. Moderated by the eMental Health International Collaborative (eMHIC), it explores both the benefits and the limitations of cross-sector collaboration—and what becomes possible when different parts of the system are examined together, without assuming partnership.
Session Structure & Flow
- Brief framing of where AI scribes stand today
- Case study: FirstHx
- Case study: CAMH
- Moderated panel discussion
- Audience Q&A
Key Takeaways
- Where AI scribes break in real-world care
- Why both clinical context and interpretation matter
- Risks: clinician rework, misdiagnosis, legal exposure, and inequities
- What this could enable for more connected, whole-person care
Presented by:
Dr. Tania Tajirian is Chief Health Information Officer and Chief of Hospital Medicine at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).
As CHIO, Tania has led a clinically driven, research-informed strategy to reduce documentation burden and optimize workflows through co-design, governance, and responsible implementation of digital tools. She is the principal investigator of CAMH’s multiyear EHR and AI initiatives, advancing practical approaches to workflow integration, trust, evaluation, and responsible AI adoption.
As Chief of Hospital Medicine, she leads research and quality improvement efforts to better integrate physical and mental health care for patients with complex needs, and contributes to national digital health strategy through leadership with Digital Health Canada.
Dr Chris O’Connor, CEO of FirstHx, critical care physician at Trillium Health Partners, and Founder and former President of Think Research.
Chris brings a rare combination of frontline clinical experience and health technology leadership. His work has focused on addressing gaps in clinical workflows through structured, evidence-based approaches, including pioneering digital order sets inspired by aviation safety checklists.
At Think Research, he led from inception in 2006 to its growth into a public listing in 2020, with solutions across 11,000 healthcare facilities worldwide. At FirstHx, he is leading the company’s growth and international expansion, applying his experience in clinical practice and company-building to improve how patient data is captured and used across care settings.
Linda Hanane Mouhamou (she/her/elle), Management Consultant and Patient Partner
Linda has nearly a decade of experience across the mental and digital health sectors. As an independent consultant, she leads strategy, operations, and implementation at the program, organizational, and system level, supporting organizations including the Mental Health Commission of Canada, Canadian Mental Health Association, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and CAMH. Her work sits at the intersection of business, equity, lived experience, and digital.
She is a Global Advisor and former Head of Strategy & Partnerships at the eMental Health International Collaborative (eMHIC), a cross-sectoral network of folks working directly or indirectly in digital mental health.
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