The “Pepsi challenge” of health care, as one health system executive put it, is on. In the race to test generative AI in medicine, ambient scribes — which listen in to the audio of a visit and turn it into a structured clinical note for the electronic health record — are leading the pack. And to find the right scribe at the right price, health systems are pitting them against each other.
The latest update of STAT’s Generative AI tracker captures nearly 90 health systems experimenting with ambient scribes — many in small pilots, but some committing to full implementation. They span from online-only telehealth companies to federally qualified health centers, though the majority of early adopters remain large, research-focused academic medical centers, many of which are developing and marketing their own tools using generative AI.
A half-dozen companies dominate AI scribe contracts with these health systems, including Microsoft’s Nuance, Nabla, and Epic-partnered Abridge. But analysis from Gartner has found more than 50 companies providing automated medical documentation for providers. In this crowded field, many health systems are pitting two and three competing products in head-to-head pilots to see which makes the cut.
