Australians sitting down with a general practitioner are increasingly being asked whether they consent to the consultation being recorded and written up by software. The answer decides whether a company the patient has never dealt with processes what is said in the room.
How many doctors are doing this depends on which question was asked. A Royal Australian College of General Practitioners poll put the figure at 40 per cent in November 2025, up from 22 per cent in August 2024, but it asked respondents whether AI scribes were currently in use in their general practice, which counts a clinic where one doctor is trialling one. A survey of 1,535 GPs run by Healthed and The Medical Republic in May 2026 asked about personal use and found 18.7 per cent used a scribe when consulting. Of those who did, 37.3 per cent used one in 80 to 100 per cent of consultations.
The products listen to the consultation and produce a draft note, referral letter or care plan afterwards. "The doctor is looking at you rather than the keyboard," RACGP spokesperson Dr Janice Tan said. She said the tools also cut work that would otherwise be done at night. "There's less documentation after hours, which is a real driver of burnout."
What the software can do without any registration is set by a distinction the Therapeutic Goods Administration published on 30 January 2026. A digital scribe intended only to transcribe or translate a clinical conversation into a written record, without analysis or interpretation, is not a medical device. Once it has a therapeutic purpose under section 41BD of the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 it is one, and it has to be entered on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods before it can be supplied here.
The line is drawn on what the manufacturer says the product is for, not on how the technology works inside. A scribe that starts recommending a diagnosis or a treatment pathway has changed category. "A product that starts suggesting a diagnosis or treatment the clinician didn't state is no longer a scribe," Tan said.
For the products that stay on the transcription side of that line, no regulator tests the accuracy of what they write. Andrew Cullen, a senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne's School of Computing and Information Systems, wrote on 3 August that about 20 per cent of AI clinical notes contain errors significant enough to affect a diagnosis, down from early systems in which up to 90 per cent of notes needed correction. Tan put the share of errors that are omissions at about 75 per cent. Cullen gave an example of the other kind: advice to quit smoking recorded as advice to avoid house fires.
The RACGP tells practices that consent has to be obtained before a scribe is used, either in writing where the doctor's medical defence organisation requires it, or verbally and recorded in the consultation notes. Its guidance, last updated in October 2025, says the output must be checked by the GP, who remains responsible for the accuracy of the patient's record. On data it says that ideally anything the scribe collects will be stored in Australia, that most providers do not keep the captured audio, and that vendors may use deidentified data to improve their products.
Digital Rights Watch tested how much of that reaches patients. In a report published on 28 July, written with research assistance from AWO and Essential, it reviewed 60 clinic privacy policies and found four that mentioned AI scribes at all. It contacted seven scribe companies. Two replied, and none would say which model their product runs on. The report also found lower transcription accuracy for patients with non-English accents, speech differences, or from minority backgrounds.
It describes a Melbourne psychiatrist who declined to take new patients who would not consent to being recorded and transcribed. "Patients need to be able to say no and still get access to health care," Digital Rights Watch head of policy Tom Sulston said.
The report asks the TGA to register and regulate scribes used in healthcare, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner to issue binding guidance on how consent is gathered and then enforce it, and the Attorney-General to prioritise the second tranche of Privacy Act reform, including mandatory privacy impact assessments before an AI tool is put into a clinical setting.
The first tranche of those privacy reforms is law and taking effect in stages. The second is still a government commitment and no bill has been introduced. The TGA has named software as a medical device an enforcement priority for 2026 and 2027, which reaches the scribes that cross into interpretation rather than the ones that stop short of it. A right to refuse a scribe with no effect on a patient's care is what Digital Rights Watch has asked for, not a description of where the rules currently sit.
