Pterion · AI · Automation
AI in the office, within PHIPA.
Most of what slows a clinic is typing, sorting and chasing. Much of it can be done by software, some of it by AI, and all of it under a privacy law that decides where patient data may go. We know where the line is because we run clinics under it.
Assess Design Build Operate
What it involves
Where the hours go, what is allowed, and what to automate first.
- 01
An hour on the floor. We watch where the hours go: registration, forms, scanning, results, recalls, the phone. Most of it is repetition, and repetition is what software does well.
- 02
The rules, stated plainly. Under PHIPA the clinic stays the custodian of its patients’ information wherever a tool runs. The College’s expectations for the record are the same whether a person or a tool wrote the note: the physician stays responsible, the patient is told, and what a tool writes is reviewed before it is signed.
- 03
Automation before AI. Typing what staff have already verified, sorting documents by what they are, filling a form from the record, sending the reminder. This is ordinary software, it is reliable, and it is where the hours are.
- 04
AI where it earns its place. Reading a scanned document, drafting a letter from a template, sorting an inbox. Always with a person reviewing, always with the data where the law says it must stay.
- 05
Systems you cannot change. An EMR without an interface, a portal that updates without notice. We automate around them, with a verification step, and a maintainer who is still here when the portal changes.
- 06
Operate. Automation breaks quietly when a portal changes. Someone has to be watching, and it is us.
What we have built
- Data entry into a system you can’t change The pre-exam questionnaire is filled from the clinic’s own records; a session guard never navigates away from a form with unsaved clinical answers. Applies to Medical · Dental · Aesthetics
- Inbound document triage Incoming results are filed to the right case before a person opens them; staff see only the exceptions. Applies to Medical · Dental
- Registration: from triple data entry to a single check Three chances to mistype a date of birth on a legal medical record became one verification. Applies to Medical · Dental
- The last step of every case, run as a batch Every completed case is submitted and its report retrieved unattended; one odd case never stops the rest. Applies to Medical
- An operations dashboard that runs itself, hourly The caseload is visible every hour without anyone logging in to look. Applies to Medical · Dental · Aesthetics
- Missed calls became leads; quiet leads got a follow-up Every unanswered call became a lead with a consented text; every lead that went quiet got a scheduled follow-up instead of being forgotten. Applies to Dental · Aesthetics
What we will not do
- Put patient information into a consumer AI tool, a free account, or any service whose terms let it keep the data or learn from it.
- Automate a clinical decision. Software prepares; the clinician decides and signs.
- Let a tool write into the record unreviewed.
- Build something a licence the clinic already owns, or a spreadsheet, would do. We have told clinics not to build, and it is in the case studies.
Questions clinics ask
- Can we use an AI scribe in Ontario?
- It can be done, inside conditions: an agreement with the vendor that satisfies PHIPA on where the recording and the transcript go, the patient told and consenting, and the physician reviewing every note before it is signed. We help a clinic choose and set up a tool inside those conditions, and we say so when a particular tool does not meet them.
- Where does the data go?
- It stays where the clinic controls it. Where the work touches patient information, it runs on a server inside the clinic or in the clinic’s own tenant. We do not hold patient data on our side.
- What should a clinic automate first?
- The task done most often, by the most people, with the least judgement: usually registration, then documents, then the phone. Never the clinical decision.
The first step
Ask for an hour. We spend it on the floor or on a call, map where the hours go, and send a short written note: what to automate first, what to leave alone, and what the rules require for each. No obligation.
Start with an assessment No obligation · a diagnosis first
What it costs
The first hour and the assessment are stated up front. Each automation is quoted on its own, in writing, as a fixed scope; operating it is a monthly amount agreed in advance. Nothing is billed that was not quoted.
We have run the front desk we are selling the fix for.
Being a clinician is hard enough. Running the business around it is not taught in professional school, and the field is corporatizing around the owners who learned it the hard way.
We exist to help clinician-owned clinics stay independent and succeed: to make the operation efficient, to teach what we had to learn ourselves, and to give owners back the part of the work they love.
an assessment.
No obligation · a diagnosis of the problem and what can be done about it · every scope quoted on its own