Neither Chris Kwaramba, Ph.D., nor Shannon Harris, Ph.D., has seen an episode of “The Pitt,” the acclaimed TV drama set in the trauma center of a major city hospital. So the two colleagues in supply chain management and analytics weren’t aware the focus of their research project was a major plotline throughout the show’s Season 2 episodes. The issue —  in that fictional as well as in real-life settings — involves medical staff using AI scribes for charting. Kwaramba and Harris have received a VCU Quest Fund award for further exploration.

"Awards like these reflect what we already know about our colleagues: They ask ambitious questions and do the work to answer them,” said Mayoor “Max” Mohan, Ph.D., associate dean for strategic affairs and research initiatives at the VCU School of Business.

On “The Pitt,” the incoming attending physician implements an AI tool so the staff can increase efficiency by significantly reducing the amount of time they spend on charting. The especially harried Dr. Santos uses the tool to catch up but fails to review the output, so she misses AI-introduced errors that potentially compromise patient safety.

“Health systems are buying AI scribes to solve the problem of burnout,” Kwaramba said, noting that physicians spend an average of 16 minutes per patient on charting. Harris added that according to statistics, “9 in 10 office-based physicians are documenting their patient encounters after hours. So that takes away from their time to do research and other things.”

But while healthcare systems have been quick to adapt AI scribes, there’s been less emphasis on oversight and validation, according to this study and others. Kwaramba and Harris’ project will address these as well as additional points.

“When we're looking at something as important as someone's health, we feel that adoption of any technology designed to solve problems should be carefully approached and done the right way,” Kwaramba said. “So the questions we’re looking at are whether medical staff would use the tool and then learn to use it well. That means knowing when to invoke AI, knowing how to carefully read the output and synthesize it, and then knowing not only when to throw things out but also, what additional notes they need to write themselves.”

 “We believe this can’t be an ad hoc process, given the propensity for AI to make mistakes,” he added. “So what we're looking at is how to standardize the way staff use this tool; we're calling it calibrated reliance. And currently, there's no good way to measure how much doctors are relying on AI and how much of the AI output is really the doctor's expertise.”

Adds Harris: “From my understanding, the AI scribe is also connected to a large healthcare database. For example, if a patient says they have a certain symptom, it will help physicians connect the dots using this vast information library. The idea is that doctors can spot things they would otherwise have missed or make connections when they otherwise couldn’t see the patterns.”

Kwaramba said they also want to determine whether using an AI scribe “positively influences the day of a physician, and does it help their well-being? Because the whole point is to reduce burnout. And then, how does it affect patient outcomes for the record to be captured with AI scribe versus medical staff typing everything out.”

The team’s project is titled “Building Calibrated Reliance: A Longitudinal Study of AI Enabled Capability Formation During System Wide Oracle Health AI Rollout.” It’s one of several that received 2026 awards from the VCU Quest Fund, which provides financial support to internal projects that foster collaboration and have the potential to translate directly into the marketplace or a healthcare setting.

 “The most interesting questions rarely sit inside a single discipline, and the Quest Fund gives our faculty the room to work across fields and with partners beyond the school,” Mohan said. “That kind of transdisciplinary reach is where the real impact happens, and everyone benefits from it.”

Kwaramba, an assistant professor, said he asked Harris, an associate professor, to join him as a co-principal investigator because “she has vast experience in healthcare operations. She's a senior colleague of mine whom I deeply respect, and she will bring a lot of value to the project.”

Harris noted that her research typically focuses on patient non-attendance and scheduling. “For a couple of years now, I’ve been talking about wanting to work with a hospital and get data to answer some very relevant questions that a physician could really benefit from. Being on this team enables me to do that.”

For more on the Quest Fund and projects awarded funding, go here.