Tag: ambient ai

Scribes Show Modest Impact at Major Academics

Posted on by Jason Barry

Ambient scribes are back in the spotlight after a new study in JAMA confirmed that they move the needle on productivity metrics, but the jury’s still out on whether that’s the best yardstick for success.

This was a big one. The study examined the impact of AI scribe use on over 1,800 clinicians at five major academic medical centers from 2023 to 2025.

  • The academics: MGB, YNHH, UCSD, UCSF, UC Davis 
  • The scribes: Abridge, Ambience, Microsoft DAX Copilot

Here’s what they found. Clinicians who used AI scribes:

  • Saved 16 minutes of documentation time per eight hours of patient care 
  • Saved 13 minutes of EHR time 
  • Could see one additional patient every two weeks
  • Saw no significant impact on EHR timeoutside of working hours

Usage patterns helped color in the story. While 1,800 AI scribe adopters is one of the largest samples out there, the 6,770 control clinicians were also offered scribes and opted not to use them.

  • The biggest gains went to the biggest users. Clinicians who used the AI scribe for over 50% of visits experienced twice the reduction in EHR time and 3x the reduction in documentation time, yet only 32% of adopters fell into this bucket.

What’s counted? What matters? This isn’t the first study we’ve covered that scores AI scribes based on metrics that researchers can easily measure (EHR time, visits), which isn’t necessarily the same as the metrics that matter most to patients or clinicians.

  • Although this study solidifies that scribes can cut documentation time, the question now is if that time gets reinvested in ways that improve care and outcomes for patients.
  • The results also confirm that the mechanism of action for scribes reducing burnout isn’t through time savings, but it’s still unclear whether it’s from having a couple more moments to take a deep breath throughout the day or from reallocating the extra minutes to things that feel valuable.

The Takeaway

This study offers the most definitive real-world data yet that AI scribes have a modest impact on productivity metrics, but it also confirms that cleaner notes aren’t the only key to improving healthcare experiences.

Stress Testing Ambient AI Scribes

Posted on by Jason Barry

Providers are lining up to see if ambient AI can live up to its promise of decreasing burnout while improving the patient experience… and researchers are starting to wonder the same thing.

A new study in JAMA Network Open investigated whether ambient AI scribes actually decrease clinical note burden, following 46 clinicians at the University of Pennsylvania Health System as they used Nuance’s DAX Copilot AI ambient scribe from July to August 2024.

  • Researchers combined EHR data with a clinician survey to determine both quantitatively and qualitatively whether ambient scribes actually make a positive impact.

Here’s what they found. Over the course of the study, ambient scribe use was associated with:

  • 20.4% less time in notes per appointment (from 10.3 to 8.2 minutes)
  • 9.3% greater same-day appointment closure (from 66.2% to 72.4%)
  • 30.0% less after-hours work time per workday (from 50.6 to 35.4 minutes)

It’s tough to argue with the data. Ambient scribing definitely moves the needle on several important metrics, and even the less clear-cut stats still had a positive spin to them.

  • Note length was 20.6% greater with scribing (from 203k to 244k characters/wk)
  • However, the percentage of documentation that was typed by clinicians was 29.6% lower compared to baseline (from 11.2% to 7.9%)

The qualitative feedback told a different story. Even though clinicians reported feeling more engaged during patient conversations, “the need for substantial editing and proofreading of the AI-generated notes, which sometimes offset the time saved” was a recurring theme in the open-ended comments.

Ambient AI received a net promoter score of 0 on a scale of -100 to 100, meaning the clinicians were as likely to not recommend it as they were to recommend it.

  • 13 clinicians would recommend ambient AI to others, 13 wouldn’t recommend it, and 11 didn’t feel strongly either way.

The mixed reviews could mean that the ambient scribe performed better/worse for different users, but it could also mean that some clinicians were more diligent at checking the output.

The Takeaway

The evidence in favor of ambient AI scribes continues to pile up – even if the pajama-time reductions in this study didn’t live up to the promise on the box. Big technology shifts also come with adjustment periods, and this invited commentary did a great job highlighting the “real risk of automation bias” that comes with ambient AI, as well as the liability risk of missing its errors.

Abridge Lands $250M and Debuts Contextual Reasoning Engine

Posted on by Jason Barry

One of the top stories to come out of last week’s ViVE conference was Abridge closing $250M in Series D funding, yet that somehow wasn’t even the biggest news in the announcement.

On top of raising a nine-figure round at a $2.5B valuation, Abridge hit the 100 health system milestone after adding to a string of recent deployments at organizations like Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins.

  • Newly announced systems included Akron Children’s, Endeavor Health, Inova, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Oak Street Health.

The real headliner was the debut of Abridge’s new Contextual Reasoning Engine, “an AI architecture that produces more clinically useful and billable notes at the point of care.”

The Contextual Reasoning Engine bolsters Abridge’s generative AI platform for clinical conversations with:

  • Contextual awareness – integrates data from retrospective patient encounters, health system-specific revenue cycle guidelines, and clinician documentation preferences to create more comprehensive notes. 
  • Problem detection – recognizes and groups medical problems, describing them with language that aligns with appropriate billing codes.
  • Actionable outputs – captures medical orders and integrates them into the EHR for clinician review.

Ambient scribing has been one of the hottest segments in digital health, helping clinicians spend more face-time with patients and less pajama time on administrative tasks.

  • That’s led to rapid adoption from providers, but it’s also caused plenty of vendors with core competencies outside of scribing to bolt the functionality onto their feature sets.
  • As a result, ambient AI startups are moving beyond clinical documentation to differentiate themselves with new use cases like coding or clinical decision support – and Abridge’s Contextual Reasoning Engine is only just the beginning.

The Takeaway

The ambient AI market is at an inflection point, and companies like Abridge are quickly raising capital and pouring it straight into R&D to own the workflows downstream from documentation. It’s a race to outrun commoditization and reach distribution before incumbents can catch up, and Abridge now has another $250M to help pick up the pace.

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