Clinician workflow is begging for AI to improve it and ambient note taking is a solid use case

We've all been to the doctor but how many of us understand the clinical workflows our healthcare providers perform? Like a lot of professionals, they take notes. AI has proven to be excellent and improving note taking. Sounds like a perfect match. But how's it working out?

A Daily Briefing on advisor.com that was published earlier in the year cites a claim by health tech experts, that "around a third of providers currently have access to ambient AI technology, and adoption will likely grow rapidly over the next few years, especially as providers increasingly prioritize work-life balance."

The part that holds up is time. As in clinicians using an ambient-scribe tool spending about 15% less time composing notes. That's what researchers at UChicago Medicine found in a 2025 study in JAMA Network Open. The effort compared AI enabled clinicians to look-alike non-users, reading an EHR clock. 15% is a solid result, particularly when you think about the long-term impact of saving nearly 3 mins of time writing notes on every patient, every week, for months and years. Plus, adoption will likely improve utilization, with users getting better at how they use the tool as they use it regularly over time.

Still, as I noted in a previous article, the use case draws attention to the critical role of the clinician and the nuances of clinical workflows. Ambient note taking is no substitute for reviewing the takeaways and figuring out what to do next. I expect we will see more friction develop when workflows attempt to integrate AI tools, especially in healthcare.