How artificial intelligence is helping medical professionals save time and reduce burnout.
It's a common complaint heard in the medical world: Patients go to their doctor hoping to have a conversation about their health needs, only for their clinician to remain glued to a computer screen while they speak.
This isn't what doctors want, either; the demands of documenting in the electronic health record are just so great that they often cannot give patients their full attention. In fact, many doctors must spend hours a day completing paperwork. One 2024 survey found that more than 90 percent of physicians reported feeling burned out, with 64 percent citing clerical requirements as a key reason.
Enter ambient AI. The technology, which uses a smartphone app to "listen" to clinical encounters (with the patient's consent) and convert the conversation into medical documentation, is transforming care for the better. Health systems and federal regulators should look to this example of how artificial intelligence that reduces administrative inefficiencies can vastly improve the care experience.
The need for ambient AI can be traced back to the electronic health record, which was developed to better track a patient's medical history. While this has made care safer and more portable, it has sucked up enormous amounts of physicians' time.
Health systems have tried to lessen this burden by hiring scribes, who accompany the physician in the exam room and write notes that the physician can later edit. Unfortunately, this concept didn't always work in practice, as I saw for myself working in an emergency department. Scribes were often college students with no medical training. Some produced acceptable documentation, but most notes were of such poor quality that it took longer to correct them than to write them myself to begin with.
AI scribes, on the other hand, are far more consistent and efficient. Physicians still need to edit the end product, but the draft is surprisingly sound. One 2024 study found that AI-augmented documentation was of higher quality than notes generated without the tool. A JAMA Network Open article in 2025 concluded that ambient scribing reduced time for note-taking by 20 percent and for after-hours work by 30 percent. Another study, published in the New England of Journal of Medicine, found that both physicians and patients at Kaiser Permanente's northern California clinics, which adopted the technology, had positive experiences. Other researchers have documented a reduction in clinician burnout and improved patient satisfaction.
As convincing as these results are, they fail to capture the awe that clinicians experience when they start using ambient AI. Brian Hoberman, an internal medicine physician who leads informal technology across Kaiser Permanente, told me that physicians have described the tool as "magic." "People are stunned" by how well ambient AI can listen, Hoberman said. They tell him the tool routinely picks up details they wouldn't have recalled, and that the note is "more detailed and richer -- and much, much faster" than what they would have written themselves.
The technology can also pull information from the patient's chart and generate a summary. This is especially useful for people with complex medical histories. It might take a clinician an hour to sort through details of past hospitalizations, analyze trends of lab results and look up past radiological studies. AI can do this in minutes.
Hoberman explained that hospitals are working with tech companies to tailor ambient AI to different specialties. A psychiatrist and an obstetrician, for instance, would include very different information in their notes. A family physician's is probably more detailed than a surgeon's. A clinic note is usually completed right after the visit, whereas a note from the emergency department might be edited once labs and radiology studies are back and finalized when the patient is either discharged or admitted to the hospital. Throughout the process, the AI-generated draft can be viewed by nurses and consulting clinicians. "That's very helpful for keeping the whole care team on the same page," Hoberman said.
Since last fall, Kaiser Permanente has made ambient AI available to all doctors at its 40 hospitals and more than 600 medical offices. The reception has been nearly uniformly positive. Whereas the early days of electronic medical records prompted complaints about burdensome workloads, Hoberman said, now he hears relief -- even joy. "People say, 'This just makes me a better doctor,'" he said. "'This lets me concentrate more on what I really came here to do ... which is engaging with my patients and helping make them better.'"
It's ironic that it has taken new technology to restore the physician-patient relationship. At a time when many Americans are rightfully concerned about the meteoric advances in AI, its implementation in the doctor's office should provide some reassurance that this tool, when applied appropriately, can do a lot of good.
Have you used ambient AI as a clinician or encountered it as patient? What has been your experience and what questions do you have? I would love to hear from you and will feature reader comments in the Checkup newsletter.
