Photo: Caroline Wimmer
With Constanze Stypula, a CEO has been at the helm of jameda for a year and wants to expand the doctor-patient portal into an integrated provider of AI software. In the interview, the former Amazon manager talks about fears of using AI in healthcare, the new documentation solution “Noa Notes” and her vision for 2025.
Hello Ms. Stypula. With Noa Notes, you announced the market launch of a new AI-based documentation in September. AI is on everyone’s lips in healthcare, but it is often software that is neither unique nor particularly new. Can you explain to us what the particular challenge is that you want to solve with Noa Notes?
That’s a fair question with a pretty clear answer. By 2050, the number of patients will increase by more than a third,* while today 60% of practicing doctors are already thinking about leaving their profession early. The reason for the dissatisfaction is well known: an excessive amount of bureaucracy and documentation requirements, which now cost practices 61 working days a year.** Clinicians also spend up to three hours writing a day.***
Structured documentation is important in order to be able to treat patients according to their needs and sustainably. But no one becomes a doctor because they want to document. This is where we start when we offer a simple and automatic solution for documentation with Noa Notes – regardless of whether it is the anamnesis discussion, the treatment plan, the information report, or a doctor’s letter.
#inquired: In conversation with Constanze Stypula, CEO of jameda
How does this work exactly?
Noa Notes transcribes the most important medical information during the consultation and can also be used as a dictation aid. All findings, therapies, disease progression or numbers are provided as text that can be individually structured.
That sounds promising, but speech recognition applications have been around since the 2000s. Where is artificial intelligence used?
Noa Notes is not just speech recognition, but is based on adaptive AI models. The Whisper system is used to record spoken information, which accurately records medical information – even in the presence of loud background noise, strong accents or speaking in foreign languages. The algorithm is constantly learning, whether it is logging technical terms, pharmaceuticals or medical devices. The information is assigned to the desired structure by an AI service from Microsoft Azure that specializes in processing medical facts.
Which disciplines can use Noa Notes for documentation?
Due to its broad database, the system is available to all medical disciplines for accurate and precise documentation.
Is Noa Notes compatible with practice management and hospital information systems, or is integration planned?
The documentation created by Noa Notes can currently be transferred to established practice management or HIS systems via copy & paste or PDF file. We are currently developing integration solutions that use open interfaces (e.g. GDT) to operate Noa Notes directly from the PVS or KIS.
Sensitive topics are discussed during consultation hours. Is the use of AI safe for doctors and patients?
Protecting patient data is of utmost importance to us. Noa Notes uses multiple levels of encryption and follows the latest state of the art technology. At jameda, patient data is processed on a secure server infrastructure and our data backup procedures follow the highest standards. In addition, our applications are certified according to the C5 standard of the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI).
What are the conditions for doctors who use Noa Notes in their practice or simply want to try it out?
Noa Notes can be used both as an extension for existing jameda services and as a standalone solution. The first 20 sessions are free, after which interested doctors can use the assistant without any limit for €49 per month. The offer can be extended as required and can be canceled on a monthly basis.
With a payment system for private services, connections to established PVS systems and the first AI-based documentation, 2024 was an innovative year for jameda. Can you give us an outlook on where the journey will take us in 2025?
Next year we will continue to pursue the goal of reducing the administrative workload for doctors so that they have more time for their patients. To this end, we will continue to rely on strong partnerships in 2025 to integrate the jameda Marketplace and Noa Notes into existing primary systems.
* Statista: Predicted increase in patients with selected diseases in Germany by 2050 (ø 35%). See also Federal Statistical Office: Population of Germany by 2050, p. 17: In the same period there will be twice as many Germans who are over 60 years old.*
** Central Institute for Statutory Health Insurance: Representative online survey among 31,739 general practitioners, specialists and psychotherapists (12/2023).
Health Foundation: Mood barometer – Representative survey of 867 general practitioners and specialists (09/2024). 44% expect the economic situation for their practices to worsen in the next six months.
KBV: Bureaucracy Index (2020)
*** German Hospital Institute: Representative survey of 98 psychiatric hospitals and 225 general hospitals (08/2024).
Source: jameda
