As I reflect on this year's AMIA (American Medical Informatics Association) Clinical Informatics Conference in Anaheim, one theme that stuck out is how ambient technologies lik and others are redefining the clinician experience. In one session I attended, about two thirds of the attendees affirmed their health system was using some form of ambient listening tool.These companies are moving beyond a simple documentation solution, but into a comprehensive workflow enhancer that takes actions on verbalized decision points. Numerous presentations showcased the technology’s promise, yet some informatics leaders confided to me that these evolving workflows short-circuit some of their finely tuned clinical decision support (CDS) in the EHR.

One example was the queuing of orders by the ambient technology for the clinician to sign. How is this any different than a clinician manually queueing ad-hoc orders? Unlike clinicians picking curated orders from an order set, the ad-hoc approach risks introducing significant clinical variation, placing safety landmines for patients, and other downstream friction that battle-tested CDS tools can avoid. I hope we won’t simply rely on interruptive alerts when the clinician goes to sign their list of ambient-queued orders 🤢. How big will the gap be between ambient intelligence and actionable guidance? It represents both a great challenge and a significant opportunity.

Phrase Health focuses on supporting the gap between decision making and downstream action. It’s essential to close the loop between ambient intelligence workflow automation and clinical action through three core capabilities: 1) real-time linkage of captured conversations with external evidence-based care guidelines, 2) intelligent detection of practice variation as it occurs, and 3) alignment of downstream actions to locally curated workflows. Despite many vendors' “one fits all” CDS approach, every organization is invariably different. Local informatics teams must be the “last mile” between ambient AI and local workflows, processes, and protocols.

The excitement around ambient listening at this year's conference confirms what many of us have long believed: the future of Clinical Informatics isn't just about installing new tools and completing IT tickets. Rather, it's about deeply integrating technologies to make the right thing the easy thing to do.

As ambient listening technology captures more clinical conversations across our partner organizations, we're uniquely positioned to connect these insights to effective CDS that exists within a health system’s EHR. Phrase Health remains committed to helping AI deliver on its ultimate promise: better care, standardized where appropriate, personalized where necessary.

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