AI Ambient Scribe in Psychiatry (AASP)

Psychiatrie St. Gallen

Status: Active, not recruiting

Conditions: Quality Improvement; Efficiency of Physician Documentation; Documentation; Empathy; Burnout; Therapeutic Alliance; Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Treatments: Device: Artificial Intelligence Ambient Scribe

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT07777224

S012026

Details and patient eligibility

About

The goal of this clinical trial is to learn if an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that listens to appointments and drafts clinical notes can help clinicians in psychiatric care. Researchers also want to know if the tool changes how patients experience their care. The study includes mental health care providers (physicians, psychologists/psychotherapists, nurses, and social workers) at Psychiatrie St. Gallen and the adult patients they see in their appointments.

The main questions it aims to answer are:

• Does the AI tool lower the time clinicians spend writing notes?
• Are notes written with the AI tool as good as or better than notes written without it?
• Do patients notice a difference in their relationship with their clinician when the tool is used?

Researchers will compare clinicians who use the AI tool to clinicians who keep writing notes their usual way, before and during the intervention period, to see if writing time, note quality, and the patient-rated therapeutic relationship differ between the two groups.

Clinicians will:

Join one of two groups. One group starts using the AI tool on August 14, 2026. The other group keeps writing notes the usual way. Both groups will be observed until the end of November 2026, with note quality evaluation completed in December 2026. Clinicians who cannot contribute to all measurements may, with their consent, remain in the study for automated measurement of documentation time only.

Patients will:

• Be invited to fill out a short, anonymous survey about their experience with their clinician.
• Be asked to agree, in writing, that researchers may review the report from their initial assessment appointment.

Enrollment: 47 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

The observed study population comprises mental health care providers (physicians, psychologists/psychotherapists, nurses, and social workers) employed at Psychiatrie St. Gallen.

Provider Inclusion Criteria:

• Readiness to use an artificial intelligence ambient scribe during patient consultations (intervention group)
• Regular clinical consultations with adult psychiatric patients

Two outcome-specific criteria apply: contribution to the report quality outcomes requires that the provider regularly conducts new-patient intakes and writes initial psychiatric assessment reports; contribution to the patient-reported outcomes requires working in the outpatient setting. Providers who cannot or no longer wish to contribute to any actively collected outcome may, with their consent, remain enrolled for passive documentation-time measurement only; for analysis, such providers stay in the group which was fixed at enrollment..

Provider Exclusion Criteria:

• notice of termination of the employment contract given during the data collection period
• Working in the dementia inpatient clinic

Patients are not the observed population, but anonymous ratings of their subjective consultation experience are collected from them, and written consent for the review of initial assessment reports is obtained.

Patient Inclusion Criteria:

- All adult patients visiting the outpatient clinic during the data collection periods for a consultation with a participating provider

Patient Exclusion Criteria:

• Insufficient German proficiency (below level B2)
• Cognitive impairment precluding informed participation
• Acute psychosis, acute suicidality, mania, or intoxication
• Severe emotional distress

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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47 participants in 2 patient groups

Control Group

No Intervention group

Description:

The mental health care providers (physicians, psychologists/psychotherapists, nurses, and social workers) in this group document their consultations as usual (typing or conventional dictation), without access to the ambient scribe. Under institutional policy, all clinicians irrespective of study participation may use general-purpose AI tools for administrative and documentation support, provided no patient-identifying data are entered; the control condition is therefore defined as documentation without the ambient scribe, not as documentation without any AI assistance.

AI-Group

Experimental group

Description:

The mental health care providers in this group use an AI ambient scribe to create their clinical notes from consultations, beginning August 14, 2026.

Treatment:

Device: Artificial Intelligence Ambient Scribe