App helps patients remember appointment information

Mirror records appointments and gives a summary afterwards

An app designed to help people remember and summarise information from medical appointments using artificial intelligence (AI) has launched.

Created by Oxford-based company Aide Health, the Mirror app records appointments and gives a summary afterwards that the patient can refer back to and share with carers and family.

Creator Ian Wharton said the platform was a "really modern application of AI to solve a challenge that is this hidden risk in every healthcare consultation that we have".

He said he came up with the idea to help his dad, who has early-stage Alzheimer's, to ensure he did not miss information from doctors appointments.

"It was the vast majority of information that was given to him that he just couldn't recall, and my biggest fear was not being by his bedside when he was told something important," he said.

"They're moments of quite often intense information, which are very very brief for you to digest often high-stakes news."

Creator Ian Wharton said he came up with the idea to help his dad

The Mirror app listens into medical appointments, and produces a detailed summary of what has been said.

Janette Alfrey was one of the first people to use the platform, and said it left her "quite stunned".

"It had given me a heading as to why I was there, and then it had talked about what was about to happen and why they were doing it, and what was going to happen when they did the next operation," she said.

"When friends and colleagues phoned up over the next couple of days asking what was going to happen, I could just send them a screenshot of what I was told.

"It saved me having to go through everything again."

Mr Wharton said patients' data recorded by the app was "theirs, we don't do anything with it - we don't sell it, we don't give it to third parties".

He said the current version, which can only be used during in-person consultations, was "just the beginning".

"Right now our app is passive - it listens and summarises for you - but in the future it will be your advocate, it will chirp, it will speak out it if it thinks there's something you should ask," he said.

"That's where this technology is going, and this is absolutely where we're going in how we manage our health."