HEALTHTECH: What are the gaps that still exist between IT and clinical collaboration when it comes to tech adoption? How can there be better alignment across an organization to adopt new tools?
CIBOTTI: For any IT solution or company, they are really focused on scalability, reliability, security and compliance, and those things are important but somewhat static. For clinicians, they want a better experience for themselves, better patient experience, quality and efficiency, and that can change from each patient interaction as to what those things mean. So, there’s a gap there that needs to be filled. As we think about tools going forward, organizations should look for solutions that have that flexibility.
HEALTHTECH: What is promising about this generation of ambient clinical documentation tools? How are organizations generally measuring success?
CIBOTTI: It was really important to get that clinician voice, and it truly was transformative. When we implemented Heidi at BILH, you could see immediately how it changes your day, your workload. As a PCP, I was able to get all my notes done at the end of the day, which truly was not something that I’ve been able to do for the past 30 years. My family has seen me spend Saturday mornings for several hours just to clean up all my notes of the week so I could start Monday fresh. Now, I could leave the office Friday and be done and have a great weekend.
I had a chance to pilot other AI scribes several years ago. I think what has changed is the immediacy of getting the information, right away, the structure of it, but also the context. It’s, “What can I do with that information? How will that help me take better care of our patients?”
When organizations look for success, it’s definitely time saved in documentation, and that has been at least one of the early goals. We have clearly seen that at BILH. A lot of people say it just reduces the cognitive load. There were clinicians at BILH who really had no problems finishing their notes. They were really fast typists; they had their templates and smart phrases, and that was never an issue for them, but they really felt like, with the new tool, they could sit back and relax and listen to the patient. The other thing that we’re starting to see is the patient experience improving. There’s some data in the literature, and certainly a lot of anecdotal data, that the clinician is more engaged. The quality of the documentation is better. We’re well beyond the time savings, which we know is there. There are so many other benefits.
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HEALTHTECH: How can organizations re-evaluate workflows so that when they adopt an ambient documentation tool, they’re not just layering a new tool over old processes? How do you see the role of the clinician evolving, and what guardrails are in place to ensure quality?
CIBOTTI: If we just continue to do the old thing, then we’re really not advancing or improving. That being said, I think if you even tell a clinician, “Well, I’m just going to add this thing on top of what you’re doing already,” then they’re going to say, “Don’t give me another button to push.” But if you also say to them, “We’re going to change everything you do, the way you do it,” they’re going to say, “Don’t mess with me.” So, you need to be in between those two extremes. Understand those workflows and what the goals are and where those bottlenecks or pain points are. If you can start solving those points, then you start to see progress and you also gain trust.
But there have to be guardrails; there has to be a clinician in the loop. We’re not asking AI to make decisions or to send orders. We want AI, for instance, in Heidi Evidence, to surface the information that’s important so the clinician can make the decision that’s right for the patient.
We also want to assure our patients that their data is secure. It’s end-to-end encryption. The data is kept local. At Heidi, we don’t use the information to train the models. That is not part of how we work, which I know a lot of patients would feel uncomfortable with. That’s really important to us.
