Ochsner Health and Kaiser Permanente Embrace Ambient AI
Healthcare organizations are increasingly drawn to ambient AI as a means of quietly and unobtrusively capturing the doctor-patient conversation.
Ochsner Health recently announced a partnership with Deepscribe to make its ambient clinical documentation tool available on the Epic EHR platform to clinicians in the health system’s 46 hospitals and 370 health and urgent care centers. Similarly, Kaiser Permanente has unveiled a deal with Abridge to deploy a comparable AI tool across 40 hospitals and over 600 sites in eight states and Washington DC.
[Also read: AI Moves From the Drawing Board to the Doctor’s Toolkit.]
How Does Ambient AI Work?
The technology acts as a medical scribe, listening to the doctor-patient encounter and transcribing the interaction for the medical record. The finished product is available shortly after the encounter, enabling clinicians to quickly review and edit the information before it’s populated in the EHR.
Why is Ambient AI Attractive to Healthcare Executives?
The attraction for healthcare executives is threefold:
- Improve patient care by personalizing care management;
- Boost operational efficiency by improving documentation and care coordination;
- Enhance data extraction by pulling relevant information from the EHR (and potentially other sources) to improve patient care and identify cost savings.
What Do Experts Say?
Harjinder Sandhu, CTO at Microsoft’s Health and Life Sciences Platforms and Solutions, stated, “Ambient AI is probably one of the fastest growing products that we have witnessed in terms of how quickly physicians are taking to it and adopting it.” He noted that it is starting to make an enormous difference in how physicians view their work and their work-life balance.
Healthcare executives say the tool aims to remove the barrier of technology between patient and doctor, allowing clinicians to focus on interaction rather than documentation.
What Are the Benefits of This Technology?
Jason Hill, Ochsner Health’s innovation officer, emphasized the reliability and scalability of ambient listening, stating, “We believe that ambient listening is a reliable, affordable, and scalable solution to help alleviate the burden of documentation for our over 4,000 providers across Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.” He added that the capability to access audio transcripts provides a superior source of truth compared to traditional documentation methods.
Ramin Davidoff, MD, executive medical director at Kaiser Permanente, highlighted that the tool is implemented with patient consent, aiming to enhance the connection between patients and physicians.
What’s Next for Ambient AI?
Stanford Medicine has also partnered with Microsoft’s Nuance Communications to launch a DAX Copilot ambient AI app, following a successful pilot program. Niraj Sehgal, MD, CMO at Stanford Health Care, remarked that AI tools will never replace clinicians but may replace parts of their workflow, potentially leading to AI systems that not only capture conversations but also suggest diagnoses and treatments.
As healthcare professionals become more comfortable with AI technology, it paves the way for further innovations that support providers and enhance patient care.
Eric Wicklund is the associate content manager and senior editor for Innovation at HealthLeaders.
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