Cleveland Clinic's chief digital officer says its AI scribe is giving some doctors 'joy' again

• Ambient AI scribes can reduce busywork and improve doctor-patient interactions.
• Cleveland Clinic's AI pilot led to widespread use, with 4,000 clinicians adopting the technology.
• AI scribes help reduce physician workload, but require careful oversight to ensure accuracy.

If you haven't encountered the technology at your most recent doctor's appointment, you've perhaps learned about it through a medical drama like "The Pitt": ambient AI scribes.

These AI-powered systems record, transcribe, and summarize patient-physician conversations. A 2025 NPJ Digital Medicine paper found that about 30% of physician practices in the United States use AI scribes to document patient encounters.

"For providers, it's great because you get an excellent draft with little effort," said Rohit Chandra, executive vice president and chief digital officer at the Cleveland Clinic. "For patients, it's good because you get a high-quality note after your visit, and you have a much better encounter because the provider isn't typing the whole time."

At the Cleveland Clinic, a nonprofit healthcare system, some physicians are using ambient AI as part of a push to reduce administrative burden and improve patient experience. The technology is intended to support physicians, not replace them, by allowing clinicians to spend more time focused on support and care.

An AI-pilot program led to eager adoption

In 2024, the Cleveland Clinic initiated a pilot project in which 250 physicians were divided into smaller groups and asked to evaluate five ambient listening products on accuracy, user experience, and helpfulness.

Dr. Eric Boose is a family physician and associate chief medical information officer at the Cleveland Clinic. He was the physician lead on the yearlong pilot project and, as part of the program, Boose tested the technology during appointments with his own patients.

"Oftentimes, with technology, people aren't ready for change," Boose told Business Insider. "In this case, we actually had people who were not part of the pilot program asking if they could have it."

At the end of the pilot, the Cleveland Clinic selected Ambience's AI platform based on its performance. After this selection, in the spring of 2025, the software was disseminated to the Cleveland Clinic's US-based clinicians, who were offered training sessions but told they were not required to use the AI tool. Within the first 15 weeks, 4,000 clinicians were actively using it.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, by August 2025, providers will have used the AI scribe to document and summarize 1 million patient encounters. Physicians who use the tool use it for about 76% of their scheduled office visits.

"I think that because we built enough understanding and enthusiasm during the pilot, we excelled at adoption," Chandra said.

How the AI scribe works

Ambience's AI scribe records the patient-physician conversation through a phone app. At the start, the physician enters their specialty into the app. Depending on the specialty, the AI will focus on specific aspects of the conversation when preparing its reports.

For example, if the appointment concerns sleep medicine, the AI might focus on retrieving details such as an individual's bedtime habits.

"It's a very flexible tool in that it can adapt to what your specialty is," Boose said.

At the Cleveland Clinic, physicians review and approve the AI-generated content before it's entered into the electronic health record.

Patients must also provide verbal consent before the software is used. Overall, Boose said that most patients have been open to its use and seem to appreciate that it allows more face-to-face time during the appointment, compared to having a doctor take notes while also being present.

"I think I've had maybe two or three patients decline over the past two years I've been using it," he added.

The AI software generates a comprehensive, structured report in Epic, along with a patient after-visit summary. These are reviewed by the physician, who can edit for clarity and accuracy. It also provides patient instructions based on the discussion during the appointment.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, the Ambience AI scribe reduced the time spent reviewing and writing notes by two minutes per appointment and 14 minutes per day.

Feedback from physicians suggests the AI scribe has brought some "joy back to caregiving," Chandra added. "They didn't become doctors to be drowning in paperwork."

AI healthcare barriers and opportunities

A clinic spokesperson told Business Insider that an estimated 5,000 providers across the healthcare system are using an AI scribe.

Despite its benefits, AI scribes aren't perfect products yet, Boose said. He added that it's a showcase of artificial intelligence, not intelligence. This is why it's especially important for physicians to review the AI-generated work.

Boosed said that patient concerns have primarily focused on what happens to the recordings. These are held for about 30 days, then de-identified and unretrievable. "We want people to feel comfortable that their data is not living somewhere in perpetuity," he said. If at any point during the appointment, a patient is uncomfortable, the physician can pause the AI recording.

While some physicians were eager to use the product at the start, others at the Cleveland Clinic had doubts about its effectiveness, Boose said. They were also nervous about AI hallucinations and emissions — factors that Chandra told Business Insider everyone has to be "very careful about."

Ultimately, at the Cleveland Clinic, as "physicians were using it more and more, they were kind of blown away," Boose said.

Looking ahead, Cleveland Clinic is interested in evaluating additional AI use cases, such as AI agents that can query patient concerns before appointments and provide actionable post-appointment steps.

"AI is going to make us more and more efficient, but it will never replace physicians," Boose said. "But it is a very exciting time for efficiency in healthcare — we haven't had this big of a game changer in a long time that can make things smoother for physicians and patients."

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