Elation Health Launches Its Own Clinical Documentation Tool

Healthcare providers across the country are launching enterprise-wide deployments of tools that use generative AI to assist with clinical documentation. Physicians are lauding these tools, saying they do a good job of reducing burnout, as well as allow them to have more meaningful and productive interactions with patients.

Some of the most popular clinical documentation tools on the market include those sold by Microsoft, Abridge, DeepScribe and Suki. On Tuesday, Elation Health — which provides an EHR and other technology for primary care providers — joined the ranks of these companies. The San Francisco-based company launched an AI-powered ambient note generation tool called Note Assist.

The tool listens to a provider’s visit with a patient, transcribes what they said and then summarizes and structures this information into a clinical note for the provider to review, edit, and sign into the chart, Elation CEO Kyna Fong explained.

“Today there are AI scribe tools … and there are EHRs who open their marketplace up to them. We’re the first certified EHR to build both. This means that Note Assist isn’t limited in its context about the patient or ability to adapt deeply to sometimes customized provider workflows,” she declared.

Note Assist uses the context that’s already in a primary care provider’s patient charts and existing note templates. This makes the tool easy for physicians to install and adapt to their practice, Fong said. 

With other tools, physicians often need to copy and paste text into fields in the EHR, she added.

“Elation’s providers report that this saves them more than two hours per day on average while allowing them to fully focus on their patients during the visit,” she declared.

Primary care clinicians spend two hours interacting with the EHR for every one hour of direct patient care, according to data from the American Academy of Family Physicians. This includes nearly a quarter of their time on EHR documentation tasks, Fong pointed out.

In addition to saving providers time and reducing their cognitive burden, Note Assist also enhances the patient experience, she added.

“Patients love that providers are giving them more eye contact while expressing greater thoughts out loud and with confidence knowing they have a trusted-AI note assistant from Elation integrating within their EHR while accurately documenting patient encounters,” Fong said.

Photo: Elena Lukyanova, Getty Images