Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic is collaborating with Epic and healthcare artificial intelligence company Abridge to develop a generative AI tool for nurses.
The ambient clinical documentation platform will be one of the first of its kind for nurses and mimic similar programs increasingly used by physicians but specialized for the nursing profession.
"Everyone knows there are challenges to the nursing workforce right now," Mayo Clinic Chief Nursing Officer Ryannon Frederick, MSN, RN, told Becker's. "One of the things that we hear is the biggest pain point in their day is documentation."
Mayo Clinic is currently obtaining consent from patients to record their visits with nurses, data that will be used to help Abridge build the AI tool, which will be built into the health system's Epic EHR. Mayo hopes to start piloting the platform in care settings in early 2025.
"Our nurses are really, really strong and excellent at the nursing practice," Ms. Frederick said. "You build that with the talent and capabilities of Abridge with their generative AI solution and their track record there, as well as Epic and their excellence in electronic medical records. All three of those capabilities were needed to build the solution."
Abridge is one of the biggest players in the growing AI medical scribe market. The startup raised $150 million in February to bring its valuation to $850 million. The company's other health system clients include Pittsburgh-based UPMC, Sacramento, Calif.-based Sutter Health, and Irving, Texas-based Christus Health. Epic, the nation's largest EHR vendor, is getting more and more into generative AI.
The new tool would help with parts of the EHR workflow and documentation requirements specific to nurses, such as patient assessments. That's why Mayo's nurses are helping develop the platform.
"No decisions about patient care and workflow that involve the way nurses deliver their care to patients should be made without their input and without their direct involvement," Ms. Frederick said. "To be honest with you, it's not even a question of if they should be involved. This tool will not work if they are not involved, and if they're not leading."
The program would fill in needed data points in the EHR that the nurses would then review for accuracy and sign off on.
Some nurses have recently expressed concerns about AI and other automated EHR workflows, even protesting the technology in California.
"Nurses, not just at Mayo Clinic, but across the country have a secure role in healthcare," Ms. Frederick said. "There is an insatiable demand for nurses, and there will always be. What we need to do is make it easier for them to provide that expertise where it's most needed without making it harder for them."
That can be done by relieving their documentation burden and getting them more time at the bedside instead of in the EHR, she said.
"This solution can translate the work they are already doing naturally right into the electronic medical record and take away the time they're spending doing the transcription so they have more time to have their hands and their eyes and their brains on the patients, doing what nurses do beautifully every day and that's providing excellent patient care," she said.