Upgrading NovoNote's Note Quality
At NovoPsych, one of the key reasons why NovoNote is the leader in mental health AI Scribes is because we have best in class note quality. And the good news is NovoNote just got even better.
We regularly evaluate updates to our AI scribe, and before any change is released, it undergoes rigorous testing against our existing system using clinician review, objective quality measures, and real-world performance data. Updates are deployed when they demonstrate improvements in note quality and accuracy.
The result is a system that gets better over time. Most of the time, improvements will not cause any noticed to clinicians. Occasionally, a substantial quality upgrade might result in a change to your notes in a way that catches your attention. This post explains what our quality process looks like and, if you ever want to fine-tune your outputs, exactly what to do.
How NovoPsych measures note quality
Evaluating note quality serves two purposes. First, it helps us to identify any errors before they reach clinicians. The second is measuring NovoNote’s output against a defined standard of what excellent mental health clinical documentation looks like, and then using that data to drive improvements.
NovoNote output is scored across 11 quality dimensions adapted from the PDQI-9 and PDSQI-9, the validated instruments that have become the field standard for assessing AI-generated clinical documentation: accuracy, thoroughness, succinctness, organisation, comprehensibility, clinical synthesis, clinical usefulness, internal consistency, and use of appropriate, non-stigmatising language. The above results show that the new notes score higher on each parameter (scale from 0 to 5, where 5 = better), with the acception of succinctness (if you want your notes shorter, read on).
Separately from quality, notes are also assessed on a safety and integrity layer that examines fabrications, clinically significant omissions, and misattributions, with each weighed for its potential clinical impact.
Our quality control framework guides the internal decisions about what improvements are worth releasing. Any changes we make are evaluated against our existing system, then shaped and refined based on clinicians’ feedback.
What changes when your notes improve
For most clinicians, improvements to NovoNote are invisible. Notes simply get better, and nothing in the workflow changes. The clinicians most likely to notice the improvements are those who have invested time tuning their notes to a particular style with customised templates and personalisation settings. The tools that made the notes feel like yours in the first place are also those that will help clinicians recalibrate their notes after an improvement has been released.
Taking control of NovoNote’s output
NovoNote offers several ways to shape output to match individual practice style. If any quality improvements shift your output in a way that doesn’t quite match your preferences, small tweaks to tools make it straightforward to fine-tune your documentation.
Tip #1 – Tweak the prompts within your template
The template editor is one of the most powerful levers available. This can be used to refine a NovoNote system template or your own existing custom template. It shapes the instructions NovoNote works from, allowing you to specify the structure, emphasis, tone, and content of your notes. Tweaking the prompts (the instructions written inside a template) can be helpful if a quality upgrade has shifted notes away from a preferred style.
The clinicians who get the most from NovoNote tend to treat their templates as a living document, refining them periodically rather than setting them once. Time spent refining a template is almost always enough to restore consistency across notes for future sessions, and, because the underlying system is now more capable, the results are frequently better than what existed before.
For more information, please see our user guides:
Tip #2 – Adjust your note length and detail settings
Note length and detail settings determine how much depth your notes contain, from brief dot-point summaries through to comprehensive, quote-rich documentation. It can be set as a default and overridden for any individual note, making it the quickest single adjustment if an upgrade shifts note length in a direction that doesn’t suit a particular session.
To learn more, see our user guide: Detail and Length of Notes and Documents – Settings
Tip #3 – Adjust your personalisation settings
The personalisation settings are a direct way to shape your output, allowing you to integrate your professional identity, treatment approaches, and document style. Together, these settings tell NovoNote who is using it and how they work – client population, theoretical orientation, preferred tone, and formatting conventions. The more completely these are filled in, the more the notes will consistently reflect your own voice and clinical approach.
To learn more, see our user guide: Personalisation in NovoNote
Together, these features are the mechanism by which NovoNote becomes yours genuinely. The clinicians who get the most from NovoNote tend to revisit all three periodically. In most cases, a small tweak is all it takes to benefit, because clearer instructions to a more capable system compound over time.
Where NovoNote is headed
AI documentation for mental health is improving rapidly, and NovoPsych intends to keep pace. NovoNote will continue to get better, the quality framework behind it will continue to develop, and clinician feedback will keep shaping the direction of both.
Your feedback matters. If something in your notes doesn’t seem right, or something works particularly well, NovoPsych wants to know. It is a direct input into what gets evaluated, improved, and prioritised next.
Better notes, less time editing, more time with clients. The standard is high, and NovoPsych intends to keep raising it.
