Interviews with clinicians about an ambient artificial intelligence documentation platform

Understand the qualitative impact of an ambient artificial intelligence (AI) documentation platform on clinicians' experiences and workflows.

A quality improvement (QI) qualitative study using semi-structured interviews after pilot implementation of an ambient AI documentation platform at a large healthcare organization in Northern and Central California. Pragmatic thematic analysis was used to code and analyze the interviews.

100 clinicians were invited and 42 (42%) participated in an interview. 23 (54.8%) were males and 28 (66.7%) in primary care. Many respondents noted that ambient AI had decreased their cognitive burden by eliminating the need to remember as many specific visit details and saved time for other tasks. They also liked how ambient AI generated transcripts in multiple languages and then created an English-language progress note. However, clinicians also reported challenges, particularly missed or inaccurate information that required them to review the transcript/audio and edit the note. Additionally, many clinicians, particularly specialists, disliked the note formatting and the inability to customize the note template as this resulted in additional manual editing.

Results from these QI qualitative interviews suggest that ambient AI improved clinicians' overall experience at work.

While there are many similarities, there may be key differences in clinician experience between ambient AI documentation platforms depending on unique features of each. Future research is needed to understand the potential range of experiences based on type of ambient AI platform and if these findings continue with longer use and broader expansion of this new and evolving technology.