Commure’s Ambient AI platform.
Tenet Health and Commure have reached a milestone agreement for company-wide deployment of its ambient AI platform. The goal behind this partnership is to simplify clinical workflows, reduce documentation burdens for physicians, and ultimately foster an innovation-driven business.
Commure is one of the emerging giants in the ambient AI space. In addition to significant investment in and development of its own proprietary models and platform, the company also last month announced that it would acquire yet another ambient writing service, Augmedix. Tenet Health is one of the largest healthcare systems and has extensive offerings rangewith more than 50 hospitals, more than 160 outpatient clinics and more than 530 ambulatory surgery centers. The system employs nearly 6,000 physicians across 50 healthcare partners and numerous facilities.
Philipp Ludwig, CEO of Tenet Physician Resources, explains that the partnership is a means to create a positive experience for everyone touching the entire spectrum of care – from patients to healthcare providers. He notes that the “focus is on providing high-quality, compassionate care to the communities we serve. The partnership with Commure supports that mission by providing our resident physicians with transformative technology that reduces administrative burdens, allowing our physician practice care teams to continue to personalize and improve the patient-clinic experience.”
Indeed, “transformational” is an appropriate word to describe the power of ambient AI technology. This entire area of innovation has received a lot of attention in recent years as inefficiencies in clinical care workflows and administrative burdens are increasingly identified as major sources of burnout and turnover for the physician workforce. A study A publication by the American Medical Association in 2022 shows that the number of burnouts has been at an all-time high in recent years. Additionally, nearly 63% of physicians report experiencing at least one manifestation of burnout. Another one study A publication from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that physicians spent an average of nearly 1.77 hours per day completing documentation tasks outside of regular business hours, and 58% of respondents stated that this reduced the potential time spent on patient care was spent, decreased.
Companies are therefore eager to test solutions that can help alleviate these burdens. The goal behind ambient dictation technology is to help doctors focus purely on the patient; software in the background deciphers the conversation and automatically generates a clinical note that the healthcare provider can then review and complete. If this method can be perfected, it could potentially save physicians many hours per day and allow for a simpler clinical workflow.
Given the potential market reach, there is certainly no shortage of competition in this area. Take for example Sukiwhich provides a similar platform for business solutions and goes even further with bot/assistant capabilities to help physicians. Another striking example is Realmwhich is working to develop specialist specific AI writing technology to ensure accuracy and appropriate context capture.
Commure’s vision is to provide technology solutions for the entire healthcare lifecycle; In addition to offering a writing platform, the company is also working on numerous other solutions for healthcare organizations, ranging from ways to enable remote patient monitoring to using data to improve revenue cycle management. Tanay Tandon, CEO of Commure, explains that the company intends to move beyond simple automation and instead discover ways to inherently improve clinical workflows and patient outcomes. Tandon explains how Commure is different from others, including how the company has focused on building their solutions with physicians; “Commure leverages Forward-Deployed Engineers (FDEs), who work side-by-side with healthcare providers to co-develop solutions tailored to real-world challenges.”
This technology will undoubtedly require a lot of socialization. Healthcare as a system is generally reluctant to change, especially when it comes to technology that can perform something as complex as note-taking. A lot of work will have to be done to rethink culture, workflow norms, and throughput expectations to effect real change. However, if this technology is developed safely, the potential applications in clinical settings and beyond are endless.