A randomized trial conducted by researchers at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health and UW Health showed that ambient AI notetaking, which involves an AI tool that passively listens to a doctor-patient visit and drafts a summary, can help reduce health care practitioner burnout by reducing time spent documenting clinical notes. The study, published in two parts in the New England Journal of Medicine Artificial Intelligence (NEJM AI), provides one of the most comprehensive pathways thus far for other health systems to test and implement this technology.
The time spent documenting patient interactions in electronic health records, or EHR, is a major contributor to burnout. Ambient AI has the ability to securely draft notes during a patient visit, freeing up the provider to interact with the patient directly and reducing documentation time. AI-generated notes are reviewed by the health care professional for quality and accuracy.
The study’s first article established a rigorous trial framework and protocols for designing, monitoring and evaluating ambient AI technology within routine care. Researchers emphasized a multidisciplinary, evidence-based approach, relying on the Learning Health System program created by UW–Madison’s Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, to develop technical workflows, governance structures and a pragmatic randomized trial design.
The result was an open-source guide known as the Pragmatic Trial Operations Playbook, which is now available to other health systems to test the safety and effectiveness of Abridge, the ambient AI technology used by UW Health, in their own workplaces.
The second article focused on the pragmatic randomized trial testing the impact of ambient AI on health care practitioner burnout and well-being. The trial showed that the use of the ambient AI scribe system correlated with a clinically meaningful reduction in burnout scores. The technology also reduced documentation time by 30 minutes per day per provider, improved the accuracy of the notes for diagnosis billing, and improved other secondary measures on well-being, like task load.
After the successful trial, which ran from August 2024 through March 2025, UW Health rolled out the ambient AI system throughout clinics and hospitals in Wisconsin and Illinois. Currently, about 800 physicians and advanced practice providers use the technology. A data dashboard allows continued monitoring of how ambient AI is performing in clinical operations.
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