Healthcare personnel employed for the purpose of creating medical documents of patients on behalf of doctors are referred to as medical scribes or transcriptionists. In other words, the medical scribes take over the clerical workload of doctors. The digitalization of healthcare has further led to a boom in the medical transcription industry and has created a multifold increase in demand for medical transcriptionists.

The format of services provided by the medical scribes varies from physician to physician depending on their preferences. Though a majority of healthcare providers have begun to outsource the work, some medical scribes make themselves available during patient visits along with the physicians, so as to record all patient medical information, insurance details, etc, right away on-site. Also, medical scribes, assist the doctors to work on the EHR systems.

Medical terminologies are converted to medical codes for a uniform global understanding in the healthcare and insurance industries. Handling of these humongous amounts of documents is done by trained medical scribes doing away with the limitations of medical transcriptionists.

Adapting to fast-paced technological innovations like Google Glass which are worn by doctors, enabling the medical scribes to view happenings on-site and document the care given to patients. This results in a win-win situation where the medical scribes can make accurate records as if they were present on-site and also eliminate the need for doctors to make dictations for medical scribes. This only brightens the future for the medical transcription industry and the American College of Medical Scribe Specialists (ACMSS) states that the number of medical scribes involved in the healthcare industry has doubled since 2014.