Dr. Jason Liauw is one of the leading US neurosurgeons in minimally invasive spine surgery. His approach is conservative (surgery only when necessary), and so, of course, he has held documentation software to the same standard.
It’s worth noting his old system wasn’t broken: he used Dragon dictation, some typing here and there, combined with switching between Epic and NextGen since his practice and the ASC each have their own. Like many providers, he had sorted out a system that got him where he needed to be amidst a variety of vendors’ solutions. In his words, “Pretty efficient overall.”
Adding another vendor to the mix? Not appealing at first, but alas, that’s when Mira came into the picture.
The disconnect, then the flip
When the team sat down with him this week in his Laguna Hills office, he told us how the first AI-generated notes read wrong: “This is not exactly my note. This is not me, not what I said in my lingo,” he recalled. While this initial reaction is not uncommon, Mira’s champions have described this as a phase that is quite short lived.
He went on: his notes started converging on his language. No longer generic clinical prose, his phrasing and reasoning were picked up accurately, so much so that he began to read “between the lines of the AI note” for what he meant. After a full day in clinic, as he put it:
You start to have more thorough notes that reflect the way you’re thinking.
The result is a note that is both faster and more complete. “Efficiency and thoroughness is the key.” He was, in his own words, “a skeptic initially.” Today, every note he writes goes through Mira, exclusively.
What hands-free actually means
Mira was the push behind dictation-plus-typing, split across two EMRs, collapsing into a system of simply reading and signing. He rarely touches a keyboard now, and notes fit into the gaps of a clinic day instead of adding to it.
“I do it either between patients, if I have a few minutes, I’ll start uploading, or right before lunch, once I’m done with all my morning patients. My web app’s always live, so whenever I’ve got a few minutes, I’ll catch up and add the notes. It comes out great. It’s phenomenal.”
Teaching the room
Word of mouth at OCNI runs through Dr. Liauw. He’s been teaching his colleagues how to use Mira, and in the process he’s built his own power-user playbook: the tips he shared with us now shape how we onboard every new practice. As is usual at Mira, we grow with our physicians.
“It’s impressive, the power of it. Everyone loves it.” In his telling, other doctors arrive the same way he did: “You hear about it, you try it, and you go, ‘Wow.’”