Evolving AI Assistants Beyond Scribes

Google Cloud Backed Suki Expands Product Offerings

 Suki, an AI healthcare assistant provider, has integrated Google Cloud's Vertex AI platform to introduce advanced patient summary and Q&A features. These upgrades aim to reduce administrative burdens for clinicians by offering quick patient insights and medical information retrieval starting in 2025​.

Key Takeaways

• Strategic Partnership with Google Cloud: Suki integrates Vertex AI to power advanced Q&A and patient summary features, solidifying its position as an end-to-end clinical AI assistant.

• Focus on Workflow Efficiency: The AI streamlines appointment prep and medical literature search, allowing clinicians to focus on patient care.

• Expansion to General AI Assistant: New capabilities move Suki beyond transcription to clinical decision support, enhancing usability in diverse healthcare settings.

• Broad Rollout in 2025: Features like drug interaction checks and patient summaries will be widely available without additional cost.

Why This Matters

We'll be seeing a big push over the next six months of scribe companies coming out with expanded service offerings to differentiate themselves in what's become a very crowded AI scribe market. Suki has gotten headlines for their partnership with Google Cloud (any of Google's efforts in health AI are worth keeping an eye on). The idea of a more comprehensive AI assistant for physicians and medical staff is deeply appealing, and we'll be interested to see if any of the scribe companies see broader adoption as they seek to expand their available tools. Full Article

New Jersey Health System Sees Mass Adoption of AI Agent Amongst Clinicians

 AtlantiCare, based in Atlantic City, N.J., has successfully implemented Oracle Health’s Clinical AI Agent(CAA), achieving an 80% adoption rate among its providers. The AI-powered tool focuses on ambient note generation and streamlining documentation to reduce administrative burdens.

Key Takeaways

• Strong Early Adoption: AtlantiCare piloted the tool with 50 providers across multiple specialties, achieving an 80% adoption rate. Providers report growing satisfaction as the technology evolves.

• Substantial Efficiency Gains: AtlantiCare is claiming the AI tool has led to a 42% reduction in documentation time across 6,000 visits, saving an average of 66 minutes per provider per day.

• Collaborative Refinement: AtlantiCare’s partnership with Oracle includes direct feedback loops where providers actively influence enhancements, which has been key to the tool’s acceptance and ongoing improvement.

Why This Matters

This article touches on a key question that underlies the mass push in new AI tools into the healthcare market: are these technologies actually gaining traction? While I have some reservations about the robustness of the 80% adoption metric, it's encouraging to see some public pronouncements around the uptake in these technologies. Like the viability of the AI tools themselves, the adoption rate is only going to increase as the tools become more integrated, better designed, and increasingly powerful - but it's important to acknowledge that for many health systems, adoption of the existing tools is likely incredibly moderated. Full Article

That’s it for now. We’ll catch up again after the new year week.

-Patrick

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