Athenahealth debuts ambient scribe choose-your-player product with Suki, iScribe

Athenahealth will release a product that allows clinicians in the same practice to choose which AI ambient scribe they want to use and easily use it in their workflow.

The new product, Ambient Notes, is launching with AI scribe providers Suki AI and iScribe AI from iScribe Health. Athena hopes that smaller provider groups who may be hesitant to jump into the AI scribing space will have flexibility to test different providers.

According to a Medical Group Management Association poll in May 2024, 28% of providers are using an AI ambient scribing tool. Athenahealth is seeking to reach the large swath of providers who have not yet taken up the tool. 

Athenahealth offers more than 10 AI scribes through its software marketplace. Athena EHR customers that prefer to use one of those providers can still do so through the marketplace. But the Ambient Notes product will have a standard user interface so that a customer can switch between Suki and iScribe and maintain their scribing setup.

Athena says the solution will allow clinicians to use an AI ambient scribe without the long-term commitment of locking themselves into a single product.

“A lot of our customers are out there going, ‘I have to pick one [scribing solution] for my 100 doctors, and we have to agree.’ … We're saying, ‘Hey, you don't have to pick one. You can, essentially, buy the product from us called Ambient Notes, and then each of your physicians can choose which one they use,’” Paul Brient, chief product officer of athenahealth, told Fierce Healthcare.

Brient explained that physicians are drawn to different scribing solutions for their stylistic differences or aptitude for a particular medical subspecialty.

“The models produce different output, much like you and I probably write differently, these models write differently, and doctors have an opinion about how they would like their notes written,” Brient said.

Ambient Notes will also be more deeply integrated into Athena’s EHR, so that clinicians do not have to open a separate application to use the technology.

For simplicity with billing, athena will allow providers to change scribe solutions at the calendar month mark, as many AI scribe companies charge customers per provider per month.

The Ambient Notes product is in a testing phase with a small set of customers. It will be rolled out to about 1,000 customers in the coming weeks and will be available to the public in 2025.

The marketplace will continue to offer other AI scribe solutions to Athenahealth customers.

“The way we work with the marketplace is we are adamantly fans of making it an open, level playing field and inviting everybody who wants to come,” Brient said.

Athenahealth will consider adding more ambient scribe solutions to its Ambient Notes product to give clinicians additional options.