Sudbury-built app helps patients remember instructions from their doctors

Sudbury nurse practitioner Nicole Welsh has created Welluma, an AI app that records visits and generates plain-language summaries.

A nurse practitioner in Sudbury has created an AI-powered app that records medical appointments and generates plain-language summaries.

Nicole Welsh said the app, called ‘Welluma,’ helps patients understand and remember what their doctor told them. It’s available in French and English and prioritizes Canadian resources.

Welsh, who has been a nurse practitioner since 2009, said she created Welluma because she saw that many patients were struggling.

“I’ve been writing down, ‘OK, this is what high blood pressure is. I want you to go to Mayoclinic.com or, you know, Diabetes Canada,’” she said.

Avoid confusing patients

“Writing down on little Post-it (notes), what I would like patients to go home and then find. Or I’m printing out pages of information for them and hoping that they go home and they get that information correctly.”

Patients would often leave appointments confused and overwhelmed, unable to explain their diagnosis to their family.

Now, Welsh said all they have to do is press record.

“In the app there’s a button to analyze the visit,” she said.

“It creates an AI-generated summary of the visit. So there’s a section for when the next follow-up is, what they talked about with their provider, what medications have changed or stayed the same.”

Dr. Alex Anawati, who has been an emergency room physician for 15 years, said AI can help improve health care in many ways.

“What I’ve used AI mostly for is to help out with administrative tasks that are related to health care and to research that I do,” said Anawati, who is also a professor at NOSM University.

AI has great potential

“With teaching in a clinical context, I think the most common use of it at the moment is using those AI scribes.”

While he said he can’t comment on the app itself, Anawati said AI has great potential, but he also has concerns.

“It’s really worth being excited about,” he said.

“Imagine a patient having access to all of their health data through a single AI platform … Imagine a provider in a remote community in northern Ontario with AI-supported decision tools that can extend (a) specialist’s reach. So the upside is really enormous.”

However, Anawati said the way the technology is developed and implemented sometimes leaves certain populations behind. He would like to see socially accountable AI that reflects the best interests of the population.

“This health-care revolution is happening … and there is not much that we can do to stop it because of the enormous promise of the technology,” he said.

“It’s very important that we get involved to shape the direction of what that looks like. Because, like I said, we’re concerned about having artificial intelligence programs and resources that work for us. We don’t want it the other way around.”

To learn more about Welluma, click here.