Ambient speech is no small buzzword in the healthcare space. Also known as ambient AI, AI scribing, and AI clinical scribe, this generative AI technology is making waves in healthcare with its touted abilities to increase efficiency, improve note quality, and improve provider well-being.
The advent of ambient speech technology is still too current to make any definitive vendor comparisons, but KLAS’ first report focused only on ambient speech technology provides healthcare organizations with a snapshot view of the ambient speech decisions that healthcare organizations are currently making.
The Sudden Boom of Ambient Speech
At this time last year, people were just beginning to talk about ambient speech. Now, it has grown at an unprecedented rate in the healthcare landscape and has become a market segment with tremendous promise.
While many healthcare products with such potential fail to live up to their promised outcomes, ambient speech both promises benefits and delivers them.
“The enthusiasm for these solutions is being matched by the energy around their impacts, which include the decrease of the cognitive burden and clinician burnout. We are actually seeing a delivery of those outcomes,” says Mac Boyter, research director at KLAS and co-author of this report.
Ambient speech’s powerful impact on healthcare is evident in the data KLAS has gathered thus far. For example, one interviewed physician shared that their experience with ambient speech “has been very positive and has helped me tremendously. If it were not for this product, I probably would have left medicine because of the administrative burden I was experiencing previously.”
Not only is ambient speech impacting providers; its effects are trickling down to patients as well. This physician also shared that their ambient speech product “has helped me focus more on the actual relationships with the patients; those relationships are critical for me. The product allows me to see my patients without being tethered to the computer the whole time and worrying about what I need to be documenting.”
Other benefits of ambient speech technology reported in KLAS data include the following:
- Reduction in providers’ cognitive load
- More focus on patients
- Less pajama time spent completing notes
- Streamlined workflows
- Greater provider efficiency
- Financial savings in retention and recruiting
“For a product to be operationally, clinically, and financially driving outcomes is pretty unique,” says Braden Taylor, KLAS insights manager and co-author of this report.
KLAS’ Report: A Snapshot in Time
KLAS is aware of not only the excitement around ambient speech but also the real impact that ambient speech solutions can have on healthcare, and we are actively gathering data to provide healthcare organizations with insights into which vendors and products effectively deliver outcomes and how provider organizations are using ambient speech technology.
In the meantime, this report shows what trends the ambient speech market is currently showing, including which vendors are being chosen by healthcare organizations and why.
For deeper insights into ambient speech vendors and their offerings, KLAS has published Emerging Insights reports on the following vendors:
- Abridge
- Ambience Healthcare
- DeepScribe AI *report in progress
- Nabla
- Nuance (a Microsoft Company) *report in progress
- Onpoint Healthcare Partners *report in progress
- Suki
The Future of Ambient Speech
Ambient speech’s place in the healthcare market will continue to develop as time passes, its reach grows, and its impact deepens. While the number of organizations piloting ambient speech products and the number of ambient speech users will grow, all current ambient speech users KLAS interviewed also expected their adoption to increase and deepen over the next six months.
Typically in healthcare, product adoption happens slowly as organizations work to get implementation teams, training programs, change management, and protocols in place. However, with ambient speech technology, those processes are virtually nonexistent. Healthcare organizations can scale their adoption of ambient speech technology much more quickly, contributing to the expected growth of ambient speech over the next year.
“Ambient speech isn’t going to be the silver bullet in every position and for every clinician,” cautions Braden Taylor. Other documentation solutions like virtual scribes and transcription services will continue to play a role in this market, but Taylor says that “we’re going to see a lot of the depth of ambient speech adoption increase over the next year.”
Boyter also anticipates ambient speech expanding capabilities for risk adjustment, CDI coding, and Medicare Hierarchical Condition Category coding. As the use cases for ambient speech continue to broaden, ambient speech will also likely expand to affect more patient types.
In all the buzz that ambient speech has created and will continue to create, KLAS will proceed to gather data on vendor performances and product outcomes. To guide their decision-making, healthcare organizations can expect a KLAS market segment report in Q1 of 2025 showing the actual progress and outcomes of ambient speech technology in healthcare.
© pressmaster / Adobe Stock
