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The AI-era and why trusted medicines information is critical
SPONSORED: With patients and digital ‘agents’ all generating answers, it highlights the need for AMH as an authoritative source for GPs.
‘AI can help draft, summarise, and produce this checklist in the consultation notes, but it cannot assume clinical accountability.’
Patients are arriving with AI-generated explanations of symptoms, medication side effects, and suggested treatment plans.
In 2024, an Australian survey published in the MJA found 9.9% of adults had used ChatGPT for health information in the preceding six months, and 61% had asked at least one higher-risk question that would typically require clinical advice.
OpenAI also released a report in January 2026, showing more than 40 million health-related searches on ChatGPT on a daily basis.
AI-generated health advice is already present in consultations, whether GPs invite it or not – it is creeping into clinical workflows, with ambient scribes and ‘copilots’ that can draft management plans.
The upside is obvious: less administrative time and better documentation within the medical record.
The downside is that these tools can produce confident but incorrect outputs and encourage automation bias, in which we trust the output because of its legacy of producing correct content.
That’s why medicines information is becoming a core safety asset.
When a decision involves polypharmacy, drug interactions, renal function dose-adjustments, pregnancy or lactation, prescribers need a reliable reference that can be interrogated quickly and consistently.
For many GPs, the Australian Medicines Handbook (AMH) serves as a single, practical medicines reference for point-of-care use, with regular updates based on Australian expertise.
In an increasingly AI-influenced consult, AMH becomes the ‘ground truth’ for clinicians to verify doses, contraindications, interactions, and monitoring.
Case study: The unknown AI interaction
Maria, 76, books an appointment as a new patient after moving to a new regional area.
She has known heart failure, atrial fibrillation, chronic kidney disease (CKD) stage 3, type 2 diabetes, depression and osteoarthritis.
Her medication list is long:
- My Health Record (MHR) shows apixaban, sotalol, perindopril, furosemide, metformin, and sertraline were recently dispensed
- During a recent emergency department visit, she reports she was given spironolactone, but it is not on MHR
- Over-the-counter (OTC) medications include ibuprofen most days, ‘natural’ sleep tablets, fish oil, and magnesium
Today, she presents with dysuria and urgency, with a urine dipstick confirming likely urinary tract infection (UTI).
She shows her phone to her GP, which says trimethoprim, as part of a Google search AI-generated response when she said UTI treatment, and she reports that she thinks she had trimethoprim last time and it worked.
Here’s where the 30-second prescribing pause matters
A rapid AMH check highlights that in a patient on an ACE inhibitor plus spironolactone, trimethoprim can materially increase hyperkalaemia risk, particularly with CKD.
Add in regular self-initiated NSAID use, and the kidney injury risk rises further.
Instead, the GP chose an appropriate alternative antibiotic and ordered a urine culture, potassium and renal function check, and reconciled medicines.
The GP advised stopping OTC NSAIDs, documented the indication for spironolactone, and flagged a structured medication review for the next appointment with the ‘natural’ sleep product to be brought into the consult because of concern about sertraline interactions.
Nothing dramatic happened in the consult with most medication harm preventable precisely because it’s predictable, and with an Australian evidence-based AMH, clinicians can take the moment to check.
A practical habit that improves prescribing quality, consider making this a default question-set before prescribing:
- Dose and patient factors: renal/hepatic impairment, age, frailty, weight
- Contraindications/cautions: what would make this unsafe today?
- Interactions: prescribed + OTC + complementary
- Monitoring: what to check and when
- Patient advice: messages that prevent avoidable harm
AI can help draft, summarise, and produce this checklist in the consultation notes, but it cannot assume clinical accountability.
In an era where answers are abundant, the safety edge comes from using a trusted medicines reference, such as AMH, consistently, and making verification a routine practice.
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