I. What are some benefits of using Pippen?

Welcome to Pippen, your AI-powered physician assistant.

Pippen helps with the paperwork and administrative burden clinicians face, which can take up to 10 to 20 hours per week of unpaid time. This costs family doctors anywhere from $96,000 to $200,000 every year. Pippen helps doctors focus on the medicine instead of the paperwork (we didn’t go to medical school to do so much paperwork!).

This administrative work amounts to 7.2 million hours of Ontario family doctor time each year. Pippen hopes to unlock these hours and contribute to a solution to the ongoing family medicine crisis and family doctor shortage in Canada.  

II. Why Pippen?

Pippen offers superior technology. With advanced large language models and our own proprietary datasets, we can give doctors back up to two hours a day of their time through superior scribing, clinical insights, referral letter generation, and billing optimization. These solutions address the entire workflow beyond just scribing capabilities. Every click and design feature was created with the family doctor in mind. 

III. What does Pippen offer?

Pippen goes beyond scribing. Pippen aims to address the entire workflow because family medicine isn’t just documentation!  Pippen can:

1. Draft referral letters
2. Write SOAP notes
3. Provide suggestions for a differential diagnosis (beta feature)
4. Suggest treatment options (beta feature)
5. Offer billing And diagnostic codes
6. And more! 

IV. How do I start using Pippen? 

Once you log in (see ‘Getting Started with Pippen’ here), you will see a screen that shows that you can begin with text or audio.

A. Begin with Audio

To use the scribing feature, click on ‘Begin with Audio.’ The platform will prompt your system to ensure the microphone is enabled and the recording is in progress. Pippen will immediately begin to pick up the voices in the room. Pippen has been tested with multiple speakers, different accents, loud backgrounds, masks on, etc., and has consistently recorded encounters quickly and accurately. 

Pippen is also able to differentiate between multiple speakers in the room. Pippen will then label them as Speaker 1, Speaker 2, et cetera. This is called diarization, and Pippen uses this feature to ensure accuracy in the encounter.   

There is a ‘Pause Recording’ option that is available if, for example, you are leaving the room or need to temporarily stop the recording. You can resume the encounter when you are ready to do so. At the end of the recording, you can click ‘End Recording.’

Once the recording has ended, you can edit the transcript if you wish (our experience suggests that this is not required – you can often skip editing and the note is still remarkably well-written). 

Click ‘Save’ to save the edits.

Then click ‘Submit Transcript.’  Pippen will automatically produce a SOAP note for you.

After reviewing, you can choose to put the SOAP note in the chart as is, or edit it as you see fit.

Without Pippen, documenting complex encounters with many different issues can be challenging–Pippen makes it so easy for you to document these kinds of appointments and relieves you of the burden of typing and remembering information, all while trying to interact with a patient.  Pippen will contextualize issues and separate problems. For example, Pippen can organize the encounter based on problem 1, problem 2, and problem 3. 

Additional Features

We have carefully designed “prompts,” which are written instructions sent to our algorithms that are optimized to work with our large language models and proprietary datasets to give family doctors the best response possible. Although you are free to interact with Pippen as you choose, we recommend using our prompts when applicable as they have been built to provide you with the best user experience. In addition to SOAP Notes, these prompts include Differential Diagnosis (beta), Treatment Options (beta), Referrals, and Billing and Diagnostic Codes. Below we will show you how to use each feature.

a. Differential diagnosis (beta)

As one of our beta features, Pippen is available to gather insights for you with respect to differential diagnosis.  Please note that this feature does not replace your clinical judgment but can help provide you with additional information that might be helpful for your encounter.

For example, after processing your encounter with a SOAP note, with a single click on ‘Differential Diagnosis’ you can obtain a list of common diagnoses, a list of do not miss diagnoses, and a summation of what diagnosis is most likely.

b. Treatment Options (beta)

As another one of our beta features, ‘Treatment Options’ provides multiple options into lifestyle interventions, pharmacotherapy, surgical procedures and more. Treatment Options also typically indicates when follow-up and monitoring is recommended. Once again, Treatment Options is not meant to replace your clinical judgment, but provides a ‘first pass’ at options that might be available for your specific encounter. 

c. Referrals

The ‘Referrals’ option allows you to draft a letter, saving you time while providing a detailed referral letter in one click.  Select the ‘Referrals’ option and scroll or begin to type in the kind of specialist to whom you would like to address the referral.  

Here, Pippen collects relevant information based on your encounter, including any patient history or medications discussed, and includes them in your referral letter.  

Billing and Diagnostic Codes

Pippen is happy to offer a billing and diagnostic codes feature that is tailored to family physicians in Ontario.  A single click  will retrieve a list of billing and diagnostic codes that are based on the encounter. This is particularly important because of changes in the acuity modifier payments for FHOs and FHNs (please see here for OMA’s FAQ on acuity modifier payments, and here for an excellent blog post explaining these new changes).  Essentially, billing more specific codes can optimize the way you are remunerated. Pippen can help provide these codes, tailored to your specific encounter, right away.

Saving the Encounter

Once you are finished interacting with Pippen, click ‘End Encounter.’ You will be prompted to save the encounter,  with the time and date of the encounter as the default file name. You can change this to whatever you choose. Then click ‘save.’

Interact with Pippen

A powerful feature of Pippen is that you are free to ask your own questions and engage in a back-and-forth discussion with the platform. Although our prompts have been carefully designed to provide optimal information for doctors, you can ask Pippen to provide all kinds of support related to family medicine!  

For example, here are ways to interact with Pippen further: 

• Ask Pippen to explain the rationale for the provided information/diagnosis 
• Ask Pippen to rephrase the SOAP note (such as making it more concise)
• Ask Pippen to use a different format for documentation (e.g. mental health)

To use one of these ‘custom’ prompts, simply type your questions/requests in the ‘Chat with Pippen’ box and click the ↑ arrow or press “Enter”.  Pippen will provide an answer for you.  

B. Begin with Text

Not all family doctors choose to use the scribing feature. That’s great!  We want you to do what works for you. Pippen has many features to offer to doctors who would prefer to type notes, or simply want to use Pippen as an informative AI-powered physician assistant for other purposes.   

Beginning with text also allows you to unlock the same features as the begin with audio.

For example, if  you did a physical on a patient and talked about smoking cessation, or did a pap, et cetera, simply enter these details into the text box and click ‘Billing and Diagnostic Codes’ (no need to click the ↑ arrow– only use this arrow when you have your own prompt for Pippen)

Pippen will tell you the relevant diagnostic and billing codes. It will also include details, such as the fees, whether the code is virtual eligible, whether it is in-basket or out-of-basket, and some additional information (such as notes to add tray fee to the eligible codes). 

You can learn more about certain procedures or medicines. For example, you can type in “teach me about Xelox” and then click the ↑ arrow beside the text box. 

Pippen will provide details about the medication, its ingredients, how it works, side effects, and what to expect when using this treatment. You can cross reference this information with other sources as you see fit.

You can also ask Pippen to interpret results such as lab results. For example, If you need clarification on specific results or want further details and information, Pippen can try to help clarify. Pippen can interpret imaging reports as well. For example, if a radiologist wrote something that is somewhat unclear, Pippen can shed light on how to approach these findings. 

And that’s the demo! Thank you for joining us on this walkthrough of Pippen. We hope you have found it informative. Pippen is meant to be explored, so we would love to hear from you how you use Pippen in your own workflow.

Please reach out to us directly at team@pippen.ai with your comments and questions. We are so excited for the future of Family Medicine!