Ambient clinical documentation is catching the eye of tech companies, EHR vendors and health systems as the technology promises to give physicians more face-to-face time with patients, CNBC reported March 16.
According to a survey from Athenahealth, 90% of physicians reported experiencing burnout, with paperwork being cited as one of the biggest contributing factors. Ambient technology, which records physicians and patient interactions automatically turning them into clinical notes, aims to alleviate this administrative burden on staff.
Microsoft-owned company Nuance created an ambient clinical documentation tool dubbed DAX Copilot. The tool is being used by more than 200 organizations, according to the news outlet.
Palo Alto, Calif.-based Stanford Health Care is one of the organizations that recently rolled out the technology from Nuance enterprisewide after a successful pilot. Christopher Sharp, MD, chief medical information officer at Stanford Health Care, said DAX has been able to save him documentation time and redirect some of his time.
"The moment that that first document returns to you, and you see your own words and the patient's own words being reflected directly back to you in a usable fashion, I would say that from that moment, you're hooked," Dr. Sharp told CNBC.
DAX has also been integrated into Epic's EHR system and Meditech's Expanse EHR system. Seth Hain, senior vice president of research and development at Epic, told CNBC that 150,000 notes have been drafted into Epic's software, with more notes being drafted in 2024 than in 2023.
"You're seeing health systems who have worked through an intentional process of acclimating their end users to this type of technology, now beginning to rapidly roll that out," he said.