SMART-journal

Background

Medical record documentation is crucial for patient safety, quality, and collaboration within healthcare, but it is also one of the most time-consuming and demanding tasks for healthcare professionals. Today’s electronic health record (EHR) systems provide limited support for overview, structuring, and active use of information in long and complex patient care pathways. At the same time, developments in generative artificial intelligence have opened up new opportunities, where AI can be used for more than speech-to-text—such as summarizing medical record content, semantic search, information structuring, and clinical decision support. To realize this potential, deep integration into the electronic patient record (EHR) is required, along with systematic validation, legal clarification, and adaptation to Norwegian conditions.

Aim

SMART Journal aims to develop, pilot, and validate AI assistants that are tightly integrated into the EHR and support healthcare professionals before, during, and after patient consultations. The project will carry out broad user involvement, further develop AI assistants for medical record summaries, semantic information processing, and decision support, and establish frameworks for clinical validation, quality assurance, and safe implementation in line with applicable regulations. The goal is to reduce time spent on documentation, improve quality and patient safety, and lay the foundation for sustainable adoption and scaling of AI-based journal support in specialized health services.

Project partners

The project is led by Vestre Viken Hospital Trust, with the University Hospital of North Norway, Sørlandet Hospital, Oslo University Hospital, the University of Oslo, and DIPS AS as key partners. The SMART Journal project— with a total budget of NOK 35 million—was awarded NOK 25 million in funding from the Research Council of Norway’s Pilot Health program in 2025.