Somerville, Mass.-based Cambridge Health Alliance has partnered with Abridge, a generative AI company focused on clinical documentation, to bolster equitable care for its diverse and multilingual patient population.
Five things to know:
1. CHA serves over 140,000 patients annually and 43% of CHA's population speaks a primary language other than English, including Portuguese and Spanish. Abridge’s multilingual capabilities were a critical factor in CHA's decision to engage the company for ambient clinical documentation.
"It’s challenging to speak in one language and type in another," said Hannah Galvin, MD, CMIO at CHA. "Clinicians can now truly focus on the patient — regardless of language — and know that Abridge will create an English note at the end of the encounter."
2. Abridge’s speech recognition technology eliminates the need for clinicians to manually select languages, automatically detecting the language and specialty to generate accurate clinical notes in real time. Its scientifically validated support for 28 languages — expanding based on the needs of healthcare systems — addressing a significant gap in healthcare for multilingual communities.
3. Abridge’s platform integrates seamlessly into EHRs, enabling real-time transformation of patient-clinician conversations into structured clinical notes. The system's Linked Evidence feature maps AI-generated summaries to verifiable data, providing clinicians with trust and transparency.
4. CHA's partnership with Abridge exemplifies how AI can enhance care delivery in underserved and diverse communities. The move aligns with CHA’s mission as a Harvard Medical School teaching affiliate to deliver equitable and innovative care.
5. Abridge's rapid adoption across the healthcare industry includes deployments at systems like UChicago Medicine, Sutter Health, Yale New Haven Health, and Emory Healthcare. Earlier this year, Abridge partnered with Mayo Clinic and Epic to develop an ambient documentation workflow for nurses, further solidifying its role as a leader in AI-driven healthcare solutions.