Ambient Listening: What Is It and How Is It Changing Healthcare Today
The role an “AI scribe” can play in patient-clinician interactions now and in the future.
What you’ll learn in this article:
- How clinicians are using ambient listening to improve efficiency and patient care
- What technologies make ambient listening possible in the healthcare setting
Today’s patients are accustomed to interacting with various technologies at their medical visits, whether at a routine wellness appointment or during a stay at the hospital. They may check in to an outpatient clinic using a kiosk, see their doctor entering information on a computer screen or have their wrist band scanned to confirm their identity before receiving a specific medication.
As artificial intelligence (AI) has made its entrance into a number of healthcare workflows, patients will be hearing more about a different technology: ambient listening. Often referred to as an AI scribe or ambient clinical listening, this technology leverages AI to take notes from conversations between clinicians and patients. By capturing relevant health information accurately and in real time, clinicians can spend less time typing and more time interacting with patients.1
After receiving consent from a patient to capture their conversation, the clinician begins recording through an application on a mobile computer or tablet. When the recording is completed, an algorithm processes the information and can quickly produce a draft clinical note with the relevant medical data. The clinician can then modify and review the summary before uploading it to the patient's electronic health record (EHR).2 The summary generated from ambient listening can also be used to help determine diagnostic codes and help populate orders for prescriptions, follow-up procedures or lab work.3
How widespread is ambient listening in healthcare?
Ambient listening is becoming more and more prevalent in various clinical settings today. A 2024 Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) survey found that 42% of medical groups are using ambient AI technology for speech recognition and note transcription, visit documentation and note generation in their practices.4
There are many potential benefits of ambient listening in healthcare, including reducing administrative burden on clinicians, increasing the accuracy of clinical notes, boosting efficiency and ultimately improving the patient’s experience with their provider. Additionally, offloading note-taking requirements during a patient visit can help alleviate the burnout many clinicians experience.
While it’s still early in the adoption cycle for this technology, clinicians and practices are already seeing the benefits. In the MGMA survey, 39% of respondents said ambient AI technology reduced staff workload. Interestingly, the practices using AI most broadly (in a quarter or more of all patient visits) were more likely to say the technology helped with workload challenges.5 Furthermore, in a pilot program using ambient listening at Stanford Medicine, 78% of physicians reported that the technology expedited their clinical note-taking.6
What technologies are involved?
In addition to generative AI, natural language processing capabilities and audio processing software, a computing device with a microphone as well as a system that can keep all data secure and HIPAA-compliant are critical to facilitate ambient listening in the medical setting. Devices like mobile computers in healthcare already perform critical functions like scanning for patient identification, providing instant alerts about changes to a patient’s condition and enabling seamless communication between healthcare providers. Ambient listening is another important function these devices will play moving forward.
As an example, Honeywell’s CT37 Healthcare Mobile Computer is used by healthcare facilities to help reduce errors, shorten response times and enable providers to make quick and informed decisions that enhance patient care. The CT37 has been certified by key EHR vendors like Epic™, MEDITECH™ and Oracle Health™ (formerly Cerner) to help ensure patient information is handled with the highest standards of security, efficiency and care.
To learn more about the different capabilities mobile devices will help bring about in healthcare in the future, visit our website.
Sources:
1 https://healthjournalism.org/blog/2024/03/all-ears-what-to-know-about-ambient-clinical-listening/
2,6 https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2024/03/ambient-listening-notes.html#:~:text=Listen%20up,are%20incorporated%20into%20the%20documentation.
3 https://healthtechmagazine.net/article/2024/08/ambient-listening-in-healthcare-perfcon#:~:text=Ambient%20listening%20is%20voice%20recognition%20technology%20that,eClinicalWorks'%20Sunoh.ai%2C%20DeepScribe%2C%20Abridge%2C%20Ambience%20and%20Augmedix.
4 https://www.mgma.com/mgma-stat/most-practices-use-ai-but-is-it-reducing-staff-workloads
5 https://www.mgma.com/getkaiasset/b02169d1-f366-4161-b4d6-551f28aad2c9/NextGen-AmbientAI-Whitepaper-2024-final.pdf
