This year, HCA Healthcare and Google Cloud have expanded their partnership by exploring ways to integrate Google’s generative AI into HCA’s workflows. The most developed project under this initiative is a pilot that began in February in which HCA’s emergency department physicians are testing a voice-enabled medical dictation tool to save them time on clinical documentation.

Over the past year, Meditech has deepened its relationship with Google Cloud by exploring ways to embed Google’s generative AI into its EHR. Some of the use cases the EHR vendor is exploring include an enhanced search and summarization tool that would present clinicians with a longitudinal view of their patient and a tool that would auto-generate clinical documentation for the hospital course summary.

Innovaccer announced a new suite of healthcare products. It comprises four different solutions — one for answering healthcare executives’ questions about their business metrics, one for automating care planning and documentation, one for generating clinical visit summaries, and one for streamlining workflows at contact centers.

Epic announced that it will integrate Abridge’s clinical documentation tool into its EHR workflow. The startup’s generative AI tool listens to visits and creates a near-instant summary that adheres to physicians’ prototypical note structure.

Amazon recently unveiled HealthScribe, an API that software companies can use to create clinical note generation apps that providers can later adopt. With this approach, Amazon is seeking to collaborate with companies that are building clinical documentation AI apps rather than compete with them. Some think this approach is clever, but others think it does little to facilitate bi-directional EHR integration and create standardization.

I interview Punit Singh Soni, CEO of Suki and Niall O’Connor, CTO, Cohere Health to evaluate two areas where AI can have an outsize impact: clinical documentation and prior authorization.

In addition to reducing workload, NLP and ambient voice technology can also improve the quality of care that clinicians provide. By analyzing EHRs and other patient data, NLP algorithms can identify potential health risk factors and recommend preventative measures.

Suki recently announced one of its biggest partnerships to date: it is integrating its voice assistant into Epic’s EHR. The startup’s assistant can be thought of as like Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa — but for doctors.

Ambient AI promises a second coming for technology at the point of care enabling EHR systems to elegantly work for providers in the background, in natural workflows and “in conversation,” versus requiring the provider and patients to step aside, waste time, and “feed the beasts” of legacy transactional systems.

Abridge announced the largest deployment of its technology to date — the University of Kansas Health System will adopt the software for more than 1,500 of its physicians across 140 locations. The startup’s technology listens to visits and creates a near-instant summary that adheres to physicians’ prototypical note structure.

Ambient scribing solutions are technical marvels, but in the end, don’t address the root problem of physician documentation. The fundamental goal is to provide an easier way for physicians to take the mental model in their head and put it into the patient’s digital file.

Advent International, a private equity firm, is investing an undisclosed amount into Iodine boosting its valuation beyond $1 billion. The hope is that the company’s AI-powered clinical documentation improvement software can capture a greater share of the market for software products that help hospitals code and bill accurately to receive reimbursement.

Microsoft will buy up healthcare AI partner Nuance for $19.7 billion. Nuance makes speech-recognition tools for clinical documentation, as well as security tools.

Automation expands the capacity of care teams, allowing providers to accomplish more with less. As a result, automation can offer an unbiased and personalized mechanism to reach patients in the manner that best suits them.

We cannot earn patients’ trust and respect if we are tethered to a computer in the exam room, navigating the EHR concurrent to a visit or otherwise in a hurry to finish so we can return to our office where data entry to the EHR awaits us.

The 51-hospital system and artificial intelligence company are building on their existing collaboration to deploy technology that will allow physicians to focus solely on their patients during visits.

The company, which offers a remote scribe services, secured $25 million in private placement financing and began trading publicly on the OTC markets after a reverse merger with Malo Holdings.

Seattle-based Saykara claims its voice-based physician assistant can now fully automate some patient interactions, meaning no scribe is required in the back end to confirm the system’s results. The system can also automatically fill out the correct fields in the EHR, requiring no clicks.

Augmedix anticipates doubling the number of doctors who use its transcription service, which blends natural language processing and human oversight. 

At the annual HIMSS conference this year, Nuance revealed its Ambient Clinical Intelligence technology, which brings AI into the whole exam room to promote natural language interaction.

The Iowa Clinic in West Des Moines implemented IKS Health’s Scribble tool, an asynchronous virtual scribe service, and it is helping physicians save time and see more patients.

The startup, Suki, has a product that enables a physician to speak about a patient’s appointment. The tool, which can be integrated into an EMR, then documents what the doctor says.

The hospital said its implementation of Medicomp’s Quippe clinical documentation system has helped it improve patient outcomes and boost clinician productivity.