Committee reviews bill to allow telehealth recordings as UVM Health demonstrates AI note‑taking

Summary

A legislative committee reviewed H.84, which would permit recording telemedicine and audio‑only visits with both provider and patient consent; UVM Health demonstrated an ambient AI tool (Abridge) used to draft clinical notes and answered questions about privacy, retention, coding and vendor data use.

A legislative committee on Tuesday revisited H.84, a proposal to allow recordings of telemedicine and audio‑only telephone appointments if both the patient and the provider consent. Jen Carvey of the Office of Legislative Council told members the bill’s change is a single added line to existing statute to permit recordings when both parties agree, and that the bill as introduced does not add separate rules about how recordings may be used.

Why it matters: Committee members pressed witnesses on whether the limited statutory change could allow vendor use of voice data for artificial‑intelligence training, emotion analysis or other purposes beyond the medical record. Those concerns cut to whether federal and state privacy laws, vendor contracts and internal health‑system governance provide adequate protection for patients and clinicians.

UVM Health’s chief health information officer, Justin Smith Donnelly, told the panel that his system has been using an ‘‘ambient’’ audio‑based…

Committee reviews bill to allow telehealth recordings as UVM Health demonstrates AI note‑taking

Summary

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