Healthwatch England has warned that AI "scribe" tools used by GPs and hospital doctors to transcribe and summarise patient consultations are producing errors in drug names and diagnoses, with mistakes sometimes only spotted by patients rather than clinicians. In one case a woman was wrongly told she had demyelination, a form of serious nerve damage linked to multiple sclerosis, when the correct result was "null demyelination"; the error was only fixed after she queried it herself, an experience she described as traumatising. The watchdog says such inaccuracies risk becoming embedded in medical records if patients fail to catch them, raising concerns as the NHS rapidly expands use of the technology.

Other cases cited include an AI scribe muddling a prescribed drug with a similarly named one, and a summary letter omitting a consultant's instruction that a patient seek a repeat migraine prescription from their GP. Some 27 different AI scribes are already in use across English GP surgeries and hospitals, despite the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency declining to classify them as medical devices, meaning there is no national oversight of their safety. The government's 10-year NHS plan is banking on such tools to cut administrative burden, but critics, including the Patients Association and a London GP who reported the tool inventing a prescription she never gave, say trust in the technology is being undermined and that reviewing transcripts for errors is eating into any time savings.