Oracle Health is building out its generative AI capabilities for inpatient nursing workflows. The company announced the U.S. availability of its clinical AI agent for nurses, as early adopters say the AI tool reduces the time nurses spend on charting.
The clinical AI agent, embedded directly within the Oracle Health Foundation electronic health record (EHR), combines voice-driven chart navigation and search, acute nursing summaries and voice-enabled discrete charting. The AI assistant is designed to help nurses quickly find patient information and document care in near real time, Oracle Health said in a press release.
A year ago, Oracle Health launched its next-gen EHR, equipped with the latest AI and voice capabilities, designed to be easier for clinicians to navigate. It marked the first major upgrade to Oracle's EHR solutions since the company bought Cerner in a $28 billion deal in June 2022. The company rebranded the Cerner business as Oracle Health.
The clinical AI agent for nurses builds on Oracle Health's growing portfolio of AI capabilities designed to alleviate administrative burden across healthcare. Since launching nearly two years ago, Oracle Health's clinical note AI tools have saved physicians more than 400,000 hours across health organizations in the U.S., the company reported.
Last month, the company rolled out new features of the clinical AI agent to help clinicians document faster, streamline professional fee coding and surface relevant patient context.
Throughout every shift, nurses move continuously between reviewing patient records, documenting care and coordinating with other clinicians. Oracle Health says it designed the clinical AI agent to make it easier for nurses to find relevant patient information, understand a patient's current condition and complete documentation more quickly. Using natural language voice commands for chart navigation and search helps nurses quickly locate information across the patient record, while AI-powered acute nursing summaries provide concise overviews of a patient's history and current condition to help limit manual chart review. Voice-enabled discrete charting enables nurses to complete structured documentation in near real-time at the point of care, the company said.
BayCare Health System is one early adopter of the clinical AI tool for nurses. Lynnette Clinton, chief information officer at BayCare Health System, said, "Helping our nurses complete documentation in real time has the potential to reduce after-shift charting, ease administrative burden, and give them more time to focus on patients."
"As we've expanded the use of generative AI across our organization, Oracle Health has continued to listen to our feedback to help ensure nursing capabilities fit naturally into the flow of care," Clinton noted.
"Nurses are the heart of patient care, yet too much of their day is spent on manual repetitive work, searching for information, documenting care, and coordinating across the care team," said Seema Verma, executive vice president and general manager, Oracle Health and Life Sciences, in a statement. "Oracle Health Clinical AI Agent for nurses delivers quicker access to patient information and enables voice-powered documentation at the point of care. By reducing administrative work, we're helping nurses spend more time with patients while supporting coordination across the care team."
The company plans to unveil its latest healthcare AI technology at its Oracle Health and Life Sciences Summit in Orlando next week.
During Oracle’s first-quarter earnings call last week, co-CEO Mike Sicilia said the company plans to debut its new agentic care management system at the event.
"More than an EHR, this system connects clinical research and care delivery, reduces the burden of records management for patients and enables providers to practice at the top of their license with AI as a user interface. There are few AI missions that matter more: helping deliver better care while freeing providers to focus on what matters most: their patients, not computer systems," he said, according to transcripts of the earnings call.
"The proof points around Oracle's AI offerings are definitive, and we remain confident in the opportunity ahead," he said.
Sicilia said the Oracle Health business "continued to accelerate" in Q1 but did not share specific details on the healthcare business.
The bipartisan vote came after a contentious hearing with agency officials over the status of the project, originally scheduled for completion in 2028 at a cost of about $10 billion. After years of delays and updates, department leaders now believe the project will take another three years and cost $27 billion — nearly three times the initial estimate, Politico reported.