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Ambient artificial intelligence, or ambient AI, is designed to adapt to and recognize human interactions in the background, in daily settings.
In healthcare, ambient AI means enabling human conversations to flow without interruption with AI assisting clinical workflows. Ambient AI in medical practice generally streamlines such as transcription, note generation and context provision. However, ambient AI has evolved in usage beyond these.
In this article, we explore the rise of ambient artificial intelligence and how it evolved to become the designated assistive technology trusted by clinicians.
Uptake of ambient AI in healthcare is occurring at an unprecedented rate, arguably faster than any other new technology in this setting. The vision from its early days stays true to its application today: ambient AI transcribes and structures patient conversations so clinicians don’t experience symptoms of burnout.
With this, ambient AI medical scribes have anchored their position in the daily lives of clinicians. Due to its growing utility, ambient AI systems were embedded in care delivery to secure long-term use benefiting both patients and doctors. Factors driving adoption include:
There is no turning back with the level of clinical efficiency and productivity that ambient AI scribes help achieve. Considering these adoption factors, both clients and clinicians are comfortable and fulfilled with using ambient AI during visits.
For instance, Heidi’s ambient AI assistant for doctors helped improve patient engagement at the Urology Specialty Care of Miami.
"Heidi streamlines my day and reduces prep time. The notes are prepared and the relevant information is already there, so the day runs smoother and charting takes less time."
Heidi’s benefits in urology is only one example. Ambient AI tools now serve many specialties, and each gets value from a different set of capabilities. The functions outlined below show what these tools can do across clinical settings.
Healthcare professionals prioritize patient care quality above anything else. To foster relationships with patients, ambient AI tools lessen their workload by operating in the background and taking in clinical information. Thinking broadly, the “always on” concept of ambient AI provides a wide range of use cases in healthcare, including:
Medical transcription is the first and major feature common among ambient AI providers. Hospitals and clinics can now easily reduce human error in documentation by using ambient AI scribes.
For example, Heidi is an AI Care Partner that offers live transcription of patient conversations, documenting speech word-by-word. This transcript is visible in a panel, and Heidi turns it into a finished note the moment the session ends. Aside from transcription, Heidi also has a Dictate feature that enables clinicians to speak into any application. The words will instantly fill out any field within an application where the cursor is pointed.
Ambient AI supports patient care beyond the screen. Use cases of ambient AI in this aspect include identifying patients' social determinants. It also highlights specific needs through medical coding and helps in identifying other patient concerns that might otherwise be overlooked.
After a patient session, whether online or in-person, ambient AI can automatically generate customized summaries. You can delegate routine tasks to it, like sending specialist referrals after every session.
Advanced models with agentic layers can do more and handle the rest for you. Heidi II is one example: once you set a workflow, it handles prep and follow-up tasks like preparing a set of documentation with context and patient history. For all that AI work, you retain human insight and control, the review and approval of the result before anything is actioned, sent or added to the file.
For ambulatory settings, ambient AI can be linked to Bluetooth-embedded microphones to ease patient discomfort during conversations. Ambient transcription means no keyboard and screen get in the way between you and patients.
This type of workflow is possible with Heidi Remote. It’s a lightweight clip-on device that allows you to move while talking to the patient. It syncs data back to Heidi, transforming the documented conversation into a full clinical transcript.
As you document a session in Heidi Scribe, coding suggestions surface alongside the note ranked by high, medium and low relevance. Those come with descriptions, parent-child relationships and a direct link to the evidence in the note that supports each one.
Heidi II's agents take the surrounding work off your list and bring it back for review. The codes stay suggestions while you confirm, replace or add, and final authority stays with you or your coding team.
The future of ambient AI in clinics will handle everything from scheduling to staff coordination and logistics. It will take care of smart staff shifting and recommend available slots with data from clinicians’ AI-assisted notes.
With Heidi’s evolution to Heidi II, AI agents can read and take care of the next day’s schedule to prepare patient context, track follow-ups and draft paperwork. For practice managers, this means less chasing and clearer visibility of tasks.
In general, ambient AI platform companies aim to make the manual aspect of work more labor-saving while being economical. Systematic clinical processes are more efficient as they reduce the cognitive load of clinicians without hurting healthcare finances. Below, we outline the main benefits ambient AI platforms offer over traditional documentation methods:
Compared to manual documentation, using ambient AI for documentation is proven to reduce charting time by 70% and boost ROI by 600%. This exemplifies ambient AI as a cost-efficient solution to prolific, time-consuming tasks like documentation across any discipline.
Integrating EHR/EMR/PMS with ambient AI scribes has shown significant clinical time recovery by saving 120,000 minutes in documentation time. Ambient AI reviews also reveal that productivity among Allied Health Practitioners (AHPs) increased by a 5.8% average against a 1-3 month timeline.
Because clinical workflow solutions in medical settings take over routine administrative tasks like documentation, communication between clinicians increasingly becomes uninterrupted. On top of this, clinicians can work even in remote areas thanks to less delays warranted by ambient AI.
In comparison to traditional methods, ambient AI has eliminated the need for extensive editing for documentation. In this ambient AI case study, it is found that ambient AI scribes outperformed human output in terms of note quality and accuracy. As its clinical applications continue to evolve, the impact of ambient AI has significantly benefited clinicians.
Of all potential use cases, ambient AI medical scribes are the most well-developed. They have already demonstrated safety and efficacy and achieved strong uptake among clinicians.
Supporting 3 million+ sessions each week worldwide, Heidi is a trusted ambient clinical AI that started as a scribe and has progressed into Heidi II. Now an AI Care Partner, Heidi assists you to get back to practicing medicine more than the paperwork around care.
Heidi’s ambient AI has doubtlessly freed clinicians from more admin work, offering them more time dedicated to patient care or personal matters. With Heidi, getting started is easy:
Heidi is compliant with regional jurisdiction and regulations to guarantee customers’ data localization and safety. This includes users in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US, APAC, South Africa and other regions. Further details on Heidi's commitment to safety and compliance can be found here.
In the US, human medical scribes cost around $40,000 per annum. This figure is around $95,000 (AUD) in Australia and £24,000 in the UK. On the other hand, healthcare ambient AI assistants generally start at $600 per month, per person. Thankfully, Heidi starts at $0 from which you can benefit for life.