Even if you haven’t come across this technology during your recent doctor’s appointment, you’ve probably learned about it through medical dramas like “The Pit” and “Ambient AI Scribe.”
These AI-powered systems record, transcribe, and summarize conversations between patients and doctors. A 2025 NPJ Digital Medicine paper found that approximately 30% of U.S. physician practices use AI scribes to record patient encounters.
“This is great for providers because they can get a good draft with very little effort,” said Rohit Chandra, executive vice president and chief digital officer at Cleveland Clinic. “It’s good for patients because they get high-quality notes after the visit, and it makes for a better encounter because the provider doesn’t have to type it out the whole time.”
At Cleveland Clinic, a nonprofit health system, some physicians are using ambient AI as part of an effort to reduce administrative burden and improve the patient experience. This technology is intended to support, rather than replace, physicians by allowing them to spend more time on support and care.
AI pilot program led to enthusiastic adoption
In 2024, Cleveland Clinic launched a pilot project. In this project, 250 physicians were divided into small groups and asked to evaluate five ambient listening products for accuracy, user experience, and usefulness.
Dr. Eric Booth is a family physician and chief medical information officer at Cleveland Clinic. He was the physician lead for the year-long pilot project, and as part of the program, Booth tested the technology during meetings with his own patients.
“Technology often prevents people from being prepared for change,” Booth told Business Insider. “In this case, we had people who were not actually part of the pilot program asking if they could take advantage of it.”
At the conclusion of the pilot, Cleveland Clinic selected Ambience’s AI platform based on its performance. Following this selection, the software was distributed to US-based Cleveland Clinic clinicians in the spring of 2025. Clinicians were provided with training sessions but were told that they were not required to use the AI tools. In the first 15 weeks, 4,000 clinicians were actively using it.
By August 2025, healthcare providers will use AI scribes to document and summarize 1 million patient encounters, according to the Cleveland Clinic. Physicians who use this tool use it for approximately 76% of their scheduled visits.
“I think we did a good job implementing it because we developed a good understanding and enthusiasm during the pilot,” Chandra said.
How AI scribe works
Ambience’s AI scribe records conversations between patients and doctors through a phone app. First, doctors enter their specialty into the app. Depending on its area of expertise, AI focuses on specific aspects of a conversation when creating a report.
For example, if the appointment is about sleeping pills, the AI might focus on capturing details such as the individual’s bedtime habits.
“This is a very flexible tool in that it can be adapted to the user’s area of expertise,” Booth said.
At Cleveland Clinic, AI-generated content is reviewed and approved by physicians before it is entered into the electronic medical record.
Patients must also provide verbal consent before using the software. Overall, Booth said, most patients are positive about its use and seem to appreciate the more face-to-face time they get during the visit, compared to having a doctor present and taking notes.
“I think in the last two years that I’ve been using this drug, I’ve probably had two or three patients decline,” he added.
The AI software generates comprehensive, structured reports in Epic, along with post-visit summaries of patients. These can be reviewed by a doctor and edited for clarity and accuracy. It also provides patient instructions based on conversations during the consultation.
According to Cleveland Clinic, Ambience AI scribe reduced the time it takes to review and write notes by 2 minutes per appointment and 14 minutes per day.
Feedback from doctors suggests that the AI scribe is “bringing the joy back into caregiving,” Chandra added. “They didn’t become doctors to drown in paperwork.”
AI healthcare barriers and opportunities
A spokesperson for the clinic told Business Insider that an estimated 5,000 providers across the health system are using AI scribes.
Despite its benefits, Booth said AI scribe is still not a perfect product. He added that this is a showcase of artificial intelligence, not intelligence. This is why it is especially important for physicians to review AI-generated work.
Bousud said patients’ concerns mainly centered on what happens to the recordings. These are stored for approximately 30 days, after which they are anonymized and cannot be retrieved. “We want people to have peace of mind that their data won’t be sitting somewhere forever,” he says. If the patient becomes uncomfortable at any point during the consultation, the doctor can pause the AI recording.
Booth said some doctors were initially enthusiastic about using the product, but other doctors at the Cleveland Clinic had doubts about its effectiveness. They’re also nervous about AI hallucinations and emissions, something Chandra told Business Insider that everyone “has to be very careful about.”
Eventually, at the Cleveland Clinic, “doctors started using it more and more, and we were kind of shocked,” Booth said.
Looking to the future, Cleveland Clinic is interested in evaluating additional AI use cases, such as an AI agent that can query patient concerns before an appointment and provide actionable steps after the appointment.
“AI will make us more and more efficient, but it will never replace doctors,” Booth said. “But this is a very exciting time for healthcare efficiency. There hasn’t been anything as transformative as this in a long time that can make things smoother for doctors and patients.”