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Comment by DannyBee

4 days ago

Get one of these: https://www.plaud.ai/

You can do whatevvr you want with the audio files - have them transcribe them, summarize them, hand them to an agent, upload them to your cloud, whatever.

The standby and talk time is really great on both the pins and the credit card sized versions.

I have a lot of friends that now use them with elderly parents/their own medical care when they need to really be able to have something automatically record/transcribe the visits.

No, do not ever do this.

In the USA, providers are openly hostile to being recorded. You had better ask at the front desk if you can record anything first. They will tell you no.

If you covertly record, then they have every right to refuse you service and eject you from the exam room.

Do not ever record anything independently with your provider. They are absolutely hostile to this and there is no getting around it.

They will tell you that it is a violation of HIPAA. It is actually a violation of CYA.

Providers do not appreciate having any independent record of one-on-ones that they cannot repudiate themselves. If they didn't document it, it didn't happen. Don't record providers.

  • What are you talking about?

    This is done all the time, and is quite common, particularly when care is shared between multiple people or people are elderly

    16% of all appointments are recorded by patients, and the number is increasing all the time. It's up like 20-30% year over year. Only 3% of those recorded are done covertly.

    Basically all medical associations have issued guidance on this and the guidance is not "kick people out of the office"

    I have never once had a provider become hostile or care. Nor has anyone I know. People record with phones, dial people in, etc.

    This is across like 10+ states, tons of conditions, ages, and hundreds of people.

    While you may have had a different experience, i dont' think i would go with "don't ever do this". It's happening in almost 1 in 5 appointments, and increasing all the time.

    • My state, Arizona, is a "one-party recording" state. I don't need to notify or inform anyone else that I am recording, because I am the one party.

      I have interacted over the phone with two major clinic systems who have busied out my line and hung up on me, just because I activated Call Recording on my Pixel.

      You try it. Telephone your clinic/hospital and activate Call Recording, and see if they will still even stay on the line with you. Notify the human who answers, and see what happens.

      This was not merely a human decision; it was the clinics' automated system countermeasures vs. recording a simple, normal phone call.

      I was also reprimanded for recording at my psychiatrist's clinic. Then they posted signs that said that all recording, photos and videos are strictly prohibited.

      When I asked at an independent Urgent Care facility, the front desk flatly refused. She insisted it was a HIPAA violation. It is not.

Is there a completely local option for something like this? I love the idea, but I don't love having yet another middleman in between everything I say and the model provider of my choice.

  • Device wise - i never found one as good and i played with a bunch. However, you have three options with plaud that i'm aware of:

    1. If you want something totally open source: https://github.com/RemiPelloux/OpenPlod

    Local-first Plaud Note Pro recording vault, transcription, and Markdown workspace. Which sounds like what you want.

    2. the Plaud SDK will let you pull from the device and send it wherever you want without touching their servers.

    3. You can also use the mobile app, disable cloud sync, and export each audio file as mp3/wav to your phone/tablet/whatever if you don't want to use #1 or #2.

    You can have it upload to your private cloud without doing any of these, but it still transits their servers first i believe, which it sounds like you are trying to avoid