Lyrebird Health has partnered with the Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre (DHCRC) and the University of Sydney to host the inaugural Digital Scribe Safety Challenge. The event launched a novel crowdsourcing initiative designed to proactively identify and mitigate risks associated with the deployment of AI scribes in clinical environments.
The kick-off event brought together over 20 students, early-mid career researchers, and clinicians for a workshop hosted by the University of Sydney. Participants actively observed Lyrebird’s AI-enabled digital scribe in use across a variety of clinical scenarios and were challenged to identify and report the risks they observed.
This challenge is the first in a series that aims to achieve several critical goals:
Lyrebird Health securely listens to patient consultations to generate a tailored summary note, ready for direct upload to the patient’s medical record. Our technology is already a trusted tool, documenting over 150,000 consultations a week in Australia alone and is in use across more than 60 hospitals in Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Dubai.
Kai Van Lieshout, Founder of Lyrebird Health, emphasised the company’s mission and commitment to safety:
"Our mission has always been simple – to help doctors practice medicine, not paperwork. This technology offers an extraordinary opportunity to ease the administrative burden that keeps clinicians from their patients. If we get it right, it can help make care more human again."
"But developing technology like this comes with responsibility. It’s not enough to build something powerful – it has to be proven safe, trusted, and grounded in evidence. That’s why partnerships like this are so important: they bring clinicians, researchers, and technology partners together to understand how these tools work in real practice, and how we can use them responsibly to truly support care.”
The need for this initiative is underscored by the current regulatory environment. Annette Schmiede, CEO of DHCRC, highlighted the limited guidance available for testing new AI health technologies.
“There is limited practical advice or guidelines to test the safety of emerging digital health technologies, such as AI scribes,” Ms Schmiede said. “This represents a novel approach to solving this gap, providing practitioner feedback based on real-world scenarios.”
Dr. Anna Janssen, University of Sydney Project Leader, noted the unique opportunity the workshop provides for future healthcare professionals:
“Using crowdsourcing is a novel way to support the ongoing improvement and safety of AI tools in the digital health landscape. This initiative gives students valuable, first-hand exposure to how AI scribes operate in real clinical settings, while strengthening their ability to identify and manage the risks associated with emerging technologies.”
The crowdsourcing workshops will be followed by an expert panel of researchers, health professionals, and technologists who will collate, prioritise, and classify the identified risks against a comprehensive harm framework. Up to three crowdsourced events are planned to run during the project.
To read more about the project, click here.
