MDwAIstScheduler: A Low-Cost, Voice-Activated Device for Hands-Free Clinical Scheduling

TL;DR

MDwAIstScheduler is a low-cost, belt-worn voice assistant for clinicians that enables hands-free scheduling during patient encounters, reducing administrative burden and burnout.

Contribution

It introduces a discreet, wearable device utilizing cloud speech recognition and LLMs for automatic, hands-free clinical scheduling.

Findings

Successfully demonstrates end-to-end scheduling pipeline

Reduces clinician distraction by avoiding visible screens

Operates on a Raspberry Pi with cloud-based AI components

Abstract

Physicians spend nearly half their workday on EHR tasks and administrative work, contributing to burnout and reducing time for direct patient care. We present MDwAIstScheduler, a low-cost, belt-worn voice assistant that allows hands-free calendar management during patient encounters. Hidden beneath a lab coat, the device avoids the eye-contact disruptions caused by visible screens or wrist-worn devices. Running on a Raspberry Pi with cloud-based speech recognition and LLM intent extraction, the system lets clinicians simply say 'Schedule a follow-up with Mr. Smith next Tuesday at 2' and automatically creates the calendar event. Our demo show-cases this end-to-end pipeline.