The interview partners
Prof. Dr. Patrick Da-Cruz is Professor of Business Administration and Health Management at the Faculty of Health Management at Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences (HNU) and Academic Director of the MBA programme in Leadership and Management in Healthcare.
Before joining HNU, Mr. Da-Cruz worked for renowned strategy consultancies in the pharmaceutical/healthcare sector and held management positions in healthcare companies in Germany and abroad.
Dr Hannah-Sophie Braun is a veterinarian, founder and CEO of ReportAssistant, an AI-powered solution for voice-based documentation in veterinary medicine. She studied veterinary medicine at the Free University of Berlin and earned her doctorate in biomedical science. While still pursuing her doctorate, she founded her first company in the field of animal health. She then worked in clinic management, focusing on operational issues related to processes and quality. Later, she moved to a venture capital fund specialising in digital health as a senior investment manager, where she helped young companies bring innovations to the healthcare market. Today, she works on practical AI applications for the digitalisation of veterinary medicine. She is a member of the ‘Future’ working group of the German Veterinary Medical Association (BTK) and regularly publishes on future topics in veterinary medicine.
How are AI-supported speech systems changing documentation?
Dr Hannah-Sophie Braun: We will soon hardly see any typing during treatment while talking to patients or pet owners. Transcription will be largely automated: I speak freely, and the system creates a structured draft in parallel, which I check, supplement and approve. The same applies to writing doctor's letters and (re)referrals: here, too, the use of AI will dramatically reduce processing time. When documentation happens on the side, it not only means less time spent, but also leads to more and therefore better documentation.
Another effect: automated, well-structured entries can be reused. Various reports can be generated from a single piece of documentation created during the appointment – the entry in the patient file, a referral and, at the same time, a summary that is easy for patients or pet owners to understand. This opens up completely new possibilities for communication – imagine if you received a written summary of your visit immediately after each visit to the doctor, with a brief overview of the topics discussed – this will fundamentally change the way a visit to the doctor is perceived.
In which areas is the greatest potential to be found?
Dr Hannah-Sophie Braun: There are several areas with great potential. First of all, treatment documentation in all its forms: consultations in practices and clinics, ward rounds, and home, workplace and stable visits. In future, the draft documentation will be created during the consultation: the system will format the content into a structured, professionally organised report (e.g. in SOAP format) and feed it directly into the file; my job as a doctor will be to check the content, prioritise and approve it – no longer to take notes at the same time.
Another area is doctor's letters and specialist findings (such as referrals). Many colleagues invest a significant portion of their working time in this – up to 20% in some cases, if the work is very detailed or involves specialised consultations. This also applies to laboratory doctors and pathologists. Here, too, long, standardisable reports are produced, often by dictation or even by hand. AI-based documentation can lead to significant time savings in this area.
All in all, this means a significant increase in efficiency: in tight staffing situations, a large part of the paperwork and follow-up work is eliminated for the specialists involved, freeing up time for tasks that directly benefit patient care.
Can these systems help reduce burnout?
Dr. Hannah-Sophie Braun: Yes, definitely. Studies show that the burden of documentation—i.e., everything related to patient records and administrative processes—contributes significantly to stress in everyday clinical practice. This is also because some of the paperwork often has to be done outside of regular working hours: after a long day, you often sit down at the computer for a “quick” moment to catch up on what has been left undone during the day. If documentation is largely automated and the draft is available immediately after the appointment, my job as a doctor shifts to quality control and approval. This saves time, but above all, it reduces the mental load of open to-dos. In the US, where AI tools are already more widely used, experience shows that if the introduction is done well, these solutions are popular for precisely this reason. Hardly anyone went into medicine because they enjoy writing or administrative tasks—on the contrary, most colleagues would like to spend more time with patients and less time at the computer. By creating documentation on the side, the cognitive load is also reduced—and with it a major stress factor in everyday clinical practice.
What challenges do you see in terms of data protection, acceptance, and connectivity?
Dr. Hannah-Sophie Braun: Data protection is a serious but solvable task. Key components of the pipeline—especially language processing and model operation—can now be operated entirely in Europe and mapped in a GDPR-compliant manner, so most concerns can be alleviated.
Experience shows that the biggest hurdles lie in integration and connectivity. Many HIS/PVS systems have evolved over time and offer only limited interfaces. In the medium term, AI-supported documentation solutions must be able to write directly to patient records, because no one wants to work with multiple logins and different systems on a permanent basis. However, this challenge affects almost all innovative digital products in healthcare: without a direct connection to patient records, large-scale implementation is difficult. As long as HIS and PVS systems offer only limited interfaces, new solutions will remain isolated solutions.
In my opinion, the biggest challenge for AI systems in documentation is change management. The basic acceptance is there—the benefits are immediately apparent to most people in everyday medical practice. The difficulty lies in replacing established routines that are not always logical but are stable in themselves. This takes time and good organization—and time is the scarcest resource in hospital and practice operations. Realistically, widespread introduction will therefore be a process lasting several years.
How will these technologies develop over the next five years?
Dr. Hannah-Sophie Braun: First, the quality will visibly improve. Transcription will become more robust in terms of accents, background noise, and technical terminology; language models will understand context better and “know” more reliably what is meant. This will reduce the need for corrections. There will also be further advances: automated billing will be a milestone that will once again lead to a significant reduction in time and stress.
Secondly, solutions are evolving from tools to voice-controlled agents. Instead of just taking notes, they respond to voice commands such as: “Show me the latest lab results and highlight any changes since the preliminary examination.” Such interactions work in a similar way to “Hey Siri”; in many situations, you will hardly need to touch the computer at all; the system takes care of the preparatory steps, asks questions if anything is unclear, and suggests useful building blocks.
Thirdly, structured data will become the norm. When findings, parameters, and measures no longer “disappear” into PDFs but are available in a structured form, teams will be able to query their own data: “How did we treat the last five cases of chronic enteropathy, with what dosages, and what were the outcomes?” This will strengthen quality management and evidence-based decisions in everyday practice.
Ultimately, AI will provide strong support in many areas in five years. Nevertheless, I am relatively certain that even in five years, the following will still apply: releasing findings, making diagnoses, and deciding on therapies will remain the task of doctors.
Thank you very much for the interview!
The content and statements presented in the interviews reflect the perspective of the interviewees and do not necessarily correspond to the position of the editorial team.
