- Environmental clinical documentation was a hot topic at this year's HIMSS conference. The conference brought together more than 30,000 medical and technology professionals in Orlando, Florida.
- The technology allows doctors to record conversations with patients and use AI to automatically convert them into clinical notes and summaries.
- Companies like Microsoft's Nuance Communications, Abridge, and Suki believe their solutions can help reduce administrative workload for physicians and prioritize patient connections.
The hottest new technology for doctors promises to bring back the old medical practice of face-to-face conversations with patients.
This week, as more than 30,000 medical and technical professionals gathered among palm trees for the HIMSS conference in Orlando, Florida, the surrounding clinical documentation was the talk of the trade.
This technology allows doctors to consensually record meetings with patients. Conversations are automatically converted into clinical notes and summaries using artificial intelligence. Companies such as Microsoft's Nuance Communications, Abridge, and Suki are developing solutions with these capabilities, which they claim can reduce administrative workload for physicians and prioritize meaningful connections with patients. There is.
“After seeing a patient, you have to write notes, place orders, and think about the patient brief,” Dr. Shiv Rao, founder and CEO of Abridge, told CNBC at HIMSS. Told. “What our technology does is it allows us to focus on the person in front of us, the person that matters most: the patient, because when we press start, we have a conversation, and then we press stop. Because you can rotate the chair within seconds”, the note is there. ”
Administrative workload is a major problem for clinicians across the U.S. health care system. More than 90% of physicians report feeling burnt out “on a regular basis,” largely due to the administrative tasks they are required to complete, according to a study published in February by Athena Health. It's for the sake of it.
According to the survey, more than 60% of physicians said they were overwhelmed with administrative demands and were working an average of 15 hours a week outside of normal business hours to keep up. Many in the industry refer to this work-from-home experience as “pajama time.”
Administrative tasks are largely bureaucratic and do not directly influence physicians' decisions regarding diagnosis and patient care, making it one of the first areas in which health systems have begun seriously considering the application of generative AI. As a result, ambient clinical documentation solutions have truly seen the light of day.
“There's no better place to be,” Kenneth Harper, general manager of DAX Copilot at Microsoft, said in an interview with CNBC.
Microsoft's Nuance announced its ambient clinical documentation tool Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX) Express in preview functionality last March. By September, the solution, now called DAX Copilot, became generally available. Harper said more than 200 organizations are currently using the technology.
Microsoft acquired Nuance in 2021 for approximately $16 billion. The company set up his two-story exhibition booth in the exhibition hall, which was often crowded with attendees.
The technology can save doctors several minutes per visit, Harper said, but the exact numbers vary by specialty. He says his team receives feedback about the service almost every day from doctors who say it has helped them care for themselves and even saved their marriages.
Harper recounted a conversation he had with a doctor who was considering retiring after more than 30 years of service. The doctor was exhausted after years of stress, but he said he was motivated to continue his work after being introduced to DAX Copilot.
“He said, 'I'm literally going to practice for another 10 years because I really enjoy what I do,'” Harper said. Just a personal anecdote about the impact it’s having on the care team.”
At HIMSS, Stanford Health Care announced the implementation of DAX Copilot across the enterprise.
Gary Fritz, director of applications at Stanford Healthcare, said the organization initially started by testing the tool in its lab. He said that when Stanford University recently surveyed doctors about their use of DAX Copilot, 96% said it was easy to use.
“I don't think I've ever seen numbers this big,” Fritz said in an interview with CNBC. “That's a big deal.”
Dr. Christopher Sharp, chief medical information officer at Stanford Health Care and one of the physicians who tested DAX Copilot, said DAX Copilot is “very seamless” to use. He said the tool's immediacy and reliability are accurate and powerful, but there is room for improvement in capturing patient tone.
Sharp said he believes the tool has saved him time creating documents and changed the way he uses that time. For example, he said he often reads and edits notes rather than creating them, so the work isn't completely gone.
In the short term, Sharp said he wants to further enhance the personalization capabilities within DAX Copilot, both on a personal and professional level. Still, he said it was easy to see the value from the beginning.
“The moment you get that first document back and see your own words and the patient's own words reflected back to you in a usable way, you're hooked. “Yes,” Sharp told CNBC. In an interview.
Fritz said it's still early in the product lifecycle and Stanford Healthcare is considering exactly what implementation will look like. He said DAX Copilot will likely be rolled out in specialized tranches.
In January, Nuance announced the general availability of DAX Copilot within Epic Systems' electronic health records (EHR).Most doctors use their EHR to create and manage patient medical records, but Epic It is the largest vendor by U.S. hospital market share, according to a May report from KLAS Research.
By integrating a tool like DAX Copilot directly into a physician's EHR workflow, physicians no longer have to switch between apps to access it, Harper says, saving time and further reducing administrative burden. .
Seth Hayne, Epic's senior vice president of research and development, told CNBC that more than 150,000 memos have been drafted. Since last year's HIMSS conference, ambient technology has been incorporated into the company's software. And technology is expanding rapidly. Hayne said more memorandums have already been drafted in 2024 than in 2023.
“We're seeing health systems that have gone through a deliberate process of acclimating their end users to this type of technology now starting to deploy it rapidly,” he said.
A company called Abridge also integrates ambient clinical documentation technology directly within Epic. Abridge declined to reveal the exact number of healthcare facilities using its technology. California-based UCI Health announced at HIMSS that it is deploying its solution system-wide.
Abridge CEO Rao said he feels the speed at which the healthcare industry is adopting ambient clinical documentation is “historic.”
In October, Abridge announced a $30 million Series B funding round led by Spark Capital, and four months later, the company closed a $150 million Series C round, according to a February release. Rao said tailwinds such as physician burnout have become a “tornado” for Abridge, and he hopes to use these funds to continue investing in the science behind the technology and where it can go next. He said he would explore.
Rao said the company is saving some doctors as much as three hours a day and has automated more than 92% of the administrative tasks it focuses on. He added that Abridge's technology is utilized in his 55 areas of expertise and in his 14 languages.
Abridge has a Slack channel called “love stories,” which was viewed by CNBC. There, the team will share the positive feedback they have received about the technology. One of his messages this week was from a doctor who said that Abridge has eliminated his least favorite part of his job and saved him about an hour and a half each day.
“Feedback like this is definitely an inspiration to everyone in the company,” Rao said.
Suki CEO Punit Soni said the ambient clinical documentation market is “fast and furious.” He said he expects rapid growth to continue over the next few years, but like any hype cycle, he thinks it will eventually subside.
Soni founded Suki more than six years ago with the hypothesis that digital assistants would be needed to help doctors manage clinical documents. Soni said Suki is currently being used in more than 30 specialties in about 250 health organizations across the country. He added that six “large health systems” have deployed Suki in the past two weeks.
“For four or five years, I basically sat there with the store open and hoping someone would show up. Now there's a whole mall here, and outside the door there's a lot of people wanting to expand. There are lines,” Soni told CNBC at HIMSS. . “I’m very, very excited to be here.”
According to Suki's website, its technology can reduce the time doctors spend on documentation by an average of 72%. The company raised $55 million in a funding round led by March Capital in 2021. Soni said it is likely to raise more funds later this year.
Soni said Suki is focused on deploying its technology at scale and exploring further applications, such as how surrounding documents can be used to assist nurses. Ta. He said Spanish will be coming to his Sukis soon, and customers should expect most major languages to follow.
“There's a lot of things that need to happen,” he said. “In the next 10 years, healthcare technology will all look very different.”
