Ambient Documentation and Artificial Intelligence for Medical Dictation Are Here: Here’s What You Need to Know
Documentation has seen impressive leaps in growth since the introduction of artificial intelligence in medical dictation software. Healthcare providers now have access to AI tools like AI Assist for Fusion Narrate, which can summarize or rephrase reports, draft emails, suggest billing codes, impressions, and recommendations, and more. The next major development in clinical documentation is ambient documentation, which can be used to automatically transcribe and generate a report for multi-party conversations, such as patient visits.
Ambient speech software is already starting to be implemented at healthcare facilities internationally. We’ve compiled everything you need to know about this new technology and how it can save countless hours for both providers and patients.
What is ambient clinical documentation?
Ambient clinical documentation is the latest technological advancement in speech recognition for medical conversations, whereby healthcare providers record the audio of a patient visit and the ambient clinical intelligence software generates a complete transcript and patient report which can then be transferred to the electronic health record (EHR).
You can think of ambient clinical documentation – also referred to as ambient clinical intelligence (ACI) – as a virtual medical note taker or an AI scribe. The doctor simply presses record on their device, then the software performs ambient listening and generates a report based on the patient visit. This is one of the more advanced implementations of AI in healthcare that allows for a more automated documentation workflow.
How does ambient software work in healthcare?
Ambient solutions make use of automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology and artificial intelligence to simultaneously create a transcript of a clinical conversation and generate a report based on that transcript.
Some ambient solutions allow doctors to use their smartphone as a recording device. After pressing record and conducting the patient visit as normal, the transcript and generated report are then automatically transferred to the doctor’s desktop workstation for insertion into the EHR.
The main benefit of this technology is reducing the amount of time medical practitioners spend either manually inputting information into the EHR or working with a scribe to complete this documentation. Time spent during each patient visit can also be reduced, as note-taking and report-building are already taken care of; at the end of a patient visit or at the end of the day, a doctor’s main responsibility is instead to review the generated report.
What are the best ambient clinical documentation solutions right now?
Ambient solutions are likely the best AI available for doctors right now due to their versatility and effectiveness in reducing time spent on documentation. There are several major players within the ambient dictation space, including Fusion Narrate ACI and DAX Copilot.
The important points to consider when determining the best ambient solution for your healthcare organization are accuracy, compatibility, flexibility, functionality, and price.
Accuracy in this case applies to both the accuracy of the speech recognition which generates the transcript and the report which is generated through AI. More advanced ambient solutions will be able to differentiate between medically-relevant and medically-irrelevant information that is shared during a clinical conversation. Any irrelevant information is then, of course, not included in the generated report.
Compatibility is important both for compatibility between an ambient solution and the devices that it can be used on (i.e. smartphone and desktop operating systems) and compatibility with EHRs when transferring the generated report.
Ensuring that systems communicate through secure data transfers is vital for any healthcare ambient solution – but the best in the business make the process seamless and compatible across any EHR.
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Flexibility is especially important for larger healthcare organizations, but also relevant for smaller practices. The key to flexibility with an ACI solution is whether each doctor can use the software the way they want to (even if that means not using the software at all).
Some doctors may prefer to use a microphone connected to their desktop workstation and place it between themselves and the patient, others may wish to do the same but with a smartphone. There will almost certainly be doctors who want to continue with their current process, whether that be dictating to send to a transcriptionist with back-end speech recognition, using front-end speech recognition to dictate directly into their EHR, or bringing a scribe into the room to take notes manually.
The most flexible ambient solutions accommodate each of these workflows, as they act as add-ons to existing speech recognition software.
Functionality is likely the biggest determining factor of which ambient clinical intelligence solution best suits your needs. For example, how easy is it to review and modify generated notes? Where are the audio, transcript, and reports routed – and can this be customized? Once finalized, how is the report entered into the EHR? Viewing a product demonstration is a great way to become more familiar with the functionality of any ambient solution.
Price is an obvious consideration in any large purchase decision – whether the software is intended for use at an independent practice or a healthcare system. There are several pricing models for ambient solutions, including pay-per-use/pay-as-you-go models, monthly add-on fees, and annual subscriptions.
Balancing accuracy, compatibility, and functionality along with price is the best way to know which solution is right for your needs. The very first ambient solutions came with a steep price tag and required the installation of physical recording devices.
As the technology has developed, it has also become more accessible – now, even a smartphone can be used as a recording device. The best ambient documentation software can significantly improve efficiency, allowing for more patient visits and less time in front of the computer.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is ambient listening?
Ambient listening refers to the speech recognition component of ambient documentation software. The recording device captures and recognizes speech, which is then used to output a transcript that can be referenced by healthcare providers. The transcript that results from ambient listening is also reformatted as a note or full report through generative AI.
- What is an ambient scribe?
Ambient scribes are another way to describe ambient documentation technology. The device that records, recognizes, transcribes, and reformats speech in a multi-party conversation in real-time is effectively an ambient scribe because it completes the same tasks as a medical scribe but acts entirely in the background while a doctor conducts a patient visit.
