Glossary: AI adoption terms for IME practices
Short version: 18 terms used across this site, each defined for how it matters when an IME practice writes its AI rules. Other pages link the first use of each term here.
Limits: This site gives templates and a process, not legal advice. We read the rules it cites on 2026-11-12; your state, your requesters' contracts and your counsel decide what your practice must do.
People and documents
- IME (independent medical examination)
- An examination requested by a third party, such as an insurer, employer or attorney, to answer set questions about a person's condition, cause or capacity. The examiner does not treat the person.
- Examinee
- The person examined in an IME. The relationship is limited to the exam, which is why the notice about software has to say who requested it and who gets the report.
- Requester
- The party who asks for and pays for the IME and receives the report. Its contract or panel agreement may carry its own terms on AI.
- Records-reviewed list
- The section of an IME report that lists the records the examiner reviewed. On this site, a record belongs on it only if the examiner read it, not if software summarized it.
- Addendum
- A supplement to a signed report, usually after new records arrive. Any AI run behind it is logged and checked like a first report.
- Incidental finding
- An important health finding outside the questions asked. AMA Opinion 1.2.6 asks examiners to tell the examinee about it and suggest follow-up care.
Privacy and contracts
- PHI (protected health information)
- Health information that identifies a person and is held by a HIPAA covered entity or its business associate. Referral letters, records, exam notes and reports all qualify.
- BAA (business associate agreement)
- The HIPAA contract with a vendor that handles PHI for you. Record the plan it covers, not only the product name.
- Minimum necessary
- The HIPAA principle of using or sharing only the PHI a task needs. For AI, it means removing other people's documents before upload and not sending audio a task does not use.
- Model training
- Using data to improve a vendor's AI models. An approved tool's contract should say in writing that your files are not used for it.
- Approved tools list
- The practice's list of AI tools and plans allowed to receive file content, with the BAA date, training clause, storage and approver for each. Appendix A of the policy template.
- Shadow AI
- AI used for work without approval, such as a personal chatbot account used to reword a referral letter. The most common way file content leaks.
Records and output
- AI use log
- The practice's own record of every AI run on a case: tool, who ran it, inputs, outputs, who checked it, corrections and whether the text reached the report.
- Audit controls
- The HIPAA security standard at 45 CFR 164.312(b): mechanisms, which may be procedural, that record and examine activity in systems holding electronic PHI.
- Chronology
- A date-ordered list of events from the records. In an IME file, each line should cite its source page.
- Page citation
- A reference from a line of AI output to the page of the record it came from. It is what lets the examiner check a fact in seconds.
- Deduplication
- Removing repeated pages, such as the same report faxed 3 times. Check whether a tool removes exact copies only or near copies too.
- Hallucination
- AI output that states something the records do not say. Opening the cited page is the check; a missing or wrong citation is the warning sign.