What You Should Know:
– Northwell Health, the largest not-for-profit health system in the Northeast, today announced a plan to deploy Abridge’s ambient artificial intelligence (AI) platform across its 28 hospitals as part of a system-wide digital transformation.
– The implementation aims to significantly improve clinical documentation of patient conversations and ease the substantial administrative burden on providers.
Ambient AI to Support Epic EHR Rollout
Northwell Health serves over 3 million patients annually and employs 20,000 physicians and 22,000 nurses across its extensive network in New York and Connecticut. The health system is currently undertaking one of the largest Epic Systems electronic health record (EHR) implementations in the country this year. Abridge’s technology was selected for its enterprise-grade ability to scale and support clinicians across many workflows as the EHR rollout progresses.
“As we transform care delivery at scale, we are focused on how ambient AI can reimagine the experience for both patients and clinicians,” said Kristin Myers, MPH, executive vice president and chief digital officer at Northwell Health. “By leveraging Abridge’s enterprise-grade technology and expertise, we’re ensuring our transformation remains centered on what matters most—improving patient care and supporting the clinicians who deliver it.”.
Combating Burnout and Reclaiming Clinician Time
The primary operational benefit of the deployment is the reduction of documentation burden, a major contributor to physician burnout. Abridge’s AI platform transforms medical conversations into clinically useful and billable documentation in real-time.
According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, Abridge’s platform can help reduce burnout by up to 67%. The platform supports clinicians across outpatient, inpatient, and emergency department settings, and handles over 55 specialties and 28 languages.
“Physician wellness and resiliency is one of the most essential issues facing healthcare today and promoting it requires redesigning how we work,” said Jill Kalman, MD, executive vice president, chief medical officer and deputy physician-in-chief at Northwell Health. “By reducing documentation burden, Abridge will help our clinicians return to what they do best: caring for our patients.”.
Extending AI Value Across Downstream Workflows
Abridge and Northwell are actively exploring how ambient AI can extend the value of clinical conversations across critical downstream workflows. These future applications include:
- Coding.
- Risk adjustment.
- Prior authorization.
- Other clinician use cases, including nursing workflows.
