August 31, 2026, (Inside AI) — An NHS watchdog has issued a stark warning that AI scribes used in medical consultations are getting drug names and diagnoses wrong, putting patient safety at risk. The alert comes after patients themselves identified errors that clinicians had missed.
Healthwatch England, the statutory patient champion, has gathered multiple cases where AI transcription tools produced inaccurate medical records. In one incident, a woman was told she had demyelination, a serious nerve condition linked to multiple sclerosis, when her MRI result actually showed no such damage.
“This was eventually corrected but was a very traumatising experience to be given an incorrect diagnosis because of AI and then be told it’s a typo,” said the woman, who asked not to be named.
The error was only fixed after the patient, an NHS health professional herself, questioned the record. The hospital changed it to “null demyelination.”
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Patients Catch Errors Doctors Miss
In another case, an AI scribe confused a prescribed drug with a similarly named medication. Again, the patient spotted the mistake. A separate AI-generated summary letter omitted that a consultant had told a patient to get a repeat prescription for migraine medication, potentially disrupting their treatment.
Healthwatch said it has heard “multiple stories from patients who have noticed these errors when a health professional hasn’t.”
“These inaccuracies may persist in their records if the patient doesn’t catch them,” the watchdog added.
The NHS is rapidly adopting AI scribes as part of its 10-year plan to shift from analogue to digital services. The government expects the tools to “liberate staff from their current burden of bureaucracy and administration.”
But a Healthwatch spokesperson warned: “Healthcare has never been error-free. But our findings show the urgent need for clarity over how patients can report and get corrected any mistakes made by AI scribing tools or the professionals that use them.”
Rachel Power, chief executive of the Patients Association, said: “Trust and confidence in this technology depend on good communication and genuine partnership with patients and right now both are missing.”
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Healthwatch is also concerned that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has decided not to classify AI scribes as medical devices. That means there will be no England-wide oversight to ensure they are safe and effective.
Currently, GPs and hospital doctors in England are using 27 different AI scribes.
Ministers have been warned that the NHS and medics could face legal action over AI errors.
Accuracy Concerns Extend Beyond Transcription
AI accuracy has come under scrutiny recently. Patients in Rotherham complained that an AI receptionist used by some GP practices did not understand their strong Yorkshire accents.
Dr Shier Ziser Dawood, a GP in London, warned last year in the British Journal of General Practice that AI scribes may prove “a double-edged sword” for family doctors.
She recounted that an AI scribe said she had told her patient to “continue their Prozac” even though she had not prescribed or discussed that drug. This is an example of a “hallucination,” where AI introduces information that was never part of the consultation.
Dawood also warned that the need for doctors to review all transcripts to check for errors means AI tools are not yet saving time. She added that if scribes allow GPs to stop taking notes, family doctors may be expected to see two more patients daily, even though UK consultation times are already among the shortest in the world.
Dr Charlotte Blease, an expert in AI use in healthcare at Uppsala University in Sweden, said: “AI can and does make mistakes.”
Her research found that GPs using ambient voice technology believe errors are more likely when consultations involve more than one person, patients with complex medical histories, or those whose first language is not English.
But she added: “The fact is, doctors can and do make mistakes without AI. And it is certainly possible the error rate is worse.”
More than half the 1,003 UK GPs in her survey last year believed their ambient AI records were more accurate than those they produced themselves.
