Last week, I met my new doctor for a virtual appointment. I'm all for them – I'm comfy, you're comfy, your cats might show up (they did).

But as the appointment went on, I couldn't help but feel for her. As we talked, she had to type out everything I said. We even laughed about it — she’d try to spell by sounding things out. We'd complete a section, then accidentally pop up a new window.

By the end of our hour together, we were only halfway through the intake form. Offhandedly, she mentioned that she'd have to rewrite it all for her electronic health record (EHR) later. It was already 5 PM.

This isn’t just a Telehealth thing. A recent study found that for every eight hours physicians spend with patients, they spend another five on the EHR. 

The administrative load contributes to a very real exodus of physicians leaving medical practice, at a time when a large physician shortage is predicted in the next decade.

What is Ambient Clinical Intelligence (ACI)?

Ambient clinical intelligence (ACI) is an answer to what we call “the documentation burden.” It uses ambient AI to write clinical documentation during the patient visit. ACI is a powerful answer to the documentation challenge.

ACI: A quick summary

• ACI uses ambient AI and voice recognition to automate clinical documentation, reducing administrative burden and clinician burnout.
• ACI captures the doctor-patient conversation in real time, generating detailed clinical notes.
• ACI is also known as "Ambient Clinical Documentation."
• Studies show that healthcare professionals' workloads are higher than ever. ACI cuts down administrative tasks and gives time back. 

Why ACI matters: Key benefits

Adopting ACI brings a range of advantages for both clinicians and patients. By supporting more meaningful patient interactions, it's raising the bar for doctor-patient conversations.

1. It reduces administrative burden

ACI provides relief from administrative burdens. ACI can significantly cut down administrative tasks and give clinicians their time back. This is increasingly vital in a healthcare landscape where simulation studies suggest primary care physicians are expected to work an impossible 27 hours per day.

2. It lowers clinician burnout

By harnessing generative AI to automate and streamline documentation, ACI directly addresses one of the biggest drivers of physician burnout: excessive administrative work. Reducing this burden ultimately helps healthcare organizations retain talented clinicians.

3. It brings accuracy and consistency

When ambient AI captures conversations in real time, clinicians don't have to worry about forgotten details or transcription errors. They get more complete, accurate, and standardized clinical notes, all while being able to focus on patient care during a visit.

4. It enhances the patient experience

ACI technology fits easily into a clinical setting. It helps facilitate a better experience for both the physician and the patient.

Patient encounters are fundamentally about connection and trust. With ACI handling the note-taking, clinicians are freed up to focus fully on listening to patient concerns, making observations, and ensuring patient satisfaction.

5. It seamlessly integrates into the EHR

Modern ACI solutions are designed to integrate with existing EHR systems, ensuring a smooth workflow without the need for major system overhauls.

How ACI Works (Overview)

Ambient AI and voice recognition technologies aren't just simple transcriptions. They're designed to understand context. The "ambient" part is just that - an automatic speech recognition capability that hangs out in the background. Enabled by machine learning and large language models, ACI works to interpret the patient conversation and pull out the important details. This technology bakes context directly into clinical note generation.

It can also automatically categorize key information, such as patient symptoms and treatment plans. For example, tools like Freed's digital scribe use ACI to categorize notes and outline symptoms and care plans. ACI integrates with existing EHR systems.

When ACI handles note generation, there's less cognitive load for the clinician. They can simply focus on the patient encounter, knowing the documentation is being managed in real time.

ACI use cases

Primary care

In busy primary care settings, ambient AI enables physicians to focus on the patient-physician relationship, rather than juggling note-taking and data entry. A family doctor using ACI will likely see higher levels of patient satisfaction.

Telehealth

ACI is a natural fit for virtual appointments, for the healthcare organizations that can accommodate it. During a remote patient visit, ACI tools do the transcription and annotation work, ensuring nothing is missed — even when technology hiccups or distractions occur.

Specialty clinics

Specialists, such as cardiologists or endocrinologists, benefit from ACI by having complex clinical discussions automatically documented and categorized. This not only ensures that critical details — like medication changes or nuanced symptoms — are accurately recorded, but also enables more effective clinical decision support by surfacing relevant information and insights.

A real-world example

A 2025 NIH study evaluated the impact of an ambient AI documentation platform across ambulatory clinics. Clinicians reported significant improvements in documentation workflow, with an odds ratio of 6.91 for ease of workflow and 4.95 for completing notes efficiently after implementation. Most clinicians agreed that the AI tool decreased documentation burden, reduced after-hours documentation, lowered burnout risk, and increased job satisfaction. Notably, 48% said they could see an additional patient if needed, and these positive effects were consistent across different specialties and levels of experience.

ACI: Part of Healthcare's Evolution

As ACI becomes a cornerstone of the modern medical record, it’s important to recognize that it doesn’t exist in isolation. Instead, it draws on a network of related technologies and practices that are collectively reshaping how clinicians interact with patients and manage information.

To fully appreciate the impact of ambient clinical intelligence, these are some of the key concepts and innovations that work alongside it:

• Ambient speech recognition
• Ambient intelligence and artificial intelligence
• Virtual assistant technology
• Medical documentation
• Scribing, medical scribes, and ambient scribe technology
• Digital scribes

Understanding these interconnected concepts reveals how generative AI and related technologies are not just easing the documentation burden, but fundamentally transforming the clinician’s daily workflow. This goes beyond straightforward annotation work.


Clinical notes are just the first step. By automating routine tasks, AI innovations like Freed allow clinicians to better focus on the patient-physician relationship and clinical decision-making. The integration of ambient AI marks a pivotal shift into a more connected and patient-centered model of care.

Freed is an AI medical scribe that uses ACI to draft clinical notes.