Two of healthcare's most prominent digital health companies are partnering on a new project to improve patient communications and outcomes.
Five things to know:
1. OpenNotes and Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have partnered with Abridge, an AI platform, to enhance patient-clinician transparency through improved patient visit summaries. This collaboration aligns with BIDMC's OpenNotes Lab initiative to advance digital health equity.
2. OpenNotes will lead a study evaluating the effectiveness of Abridge's AI-generated visit summaries for patients, assessing their usability and accessibility in focus groups. Abridge will summarize the information and provide next steps at an 8th grade reading level.
3. By involving patients in the design process, the partnership seeks to establish best practices for transparent, AI-supported documentation that benefits patients, caregivers, and clinicians alike.
4. Abridge's platform generates real-time clinical notes and patient summaries, simplifying information like diagnoses and next steps at an accessible reading level. The partnership seeks to refine these summaries, aiming to set new standards for patient-facing health documentation.
5. The collaboration reflects a broader commitment to responsible AI use in healthcare, supporting BIDMC’s mission to improve care quality through transparency. Leaders from OpenNotes and Abridge view this work as an important step in reshaping patient communications in digital health.
"We are excited to lead this project that brings patients' voices directly into the design of health AI tools," said Catherine M. DesRoches, DrPH, executive director of OpenNotes at BIDMC, and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. "By centering patients and their care partners in the process, we aim to establish new standards for responsible and transparent use of AI in clinical documentation, and ensuring these technologies serve patients, care partners, and clinicians."