At Cleveland Clinic, a pilot that began with 250 physicians testing five ambient listening products has grown into an expanded rollout of an Ambience AI scribe. By August 2025, the hospital system expects providers to document and summarize 1 million patient e
The draft note no longer has to be built from scratch before the conversation is even over.
At Cleveland Clinic. physicians have increasingly turned to an ambient AI scribe system that listens to patient-physician conversations. transcribes and summarizes what was discussed. then produces a structured report that clinicians review before it is entered into the electronic health record. Executives and physician leaders say the push is aimed at cutting down administrative time—freeing clinicians to spend more of the appointment focused on care. rather than typing.
“For providers. it’s great because you get an excellent draft with little effort. ” Rohit Chandra. executive vice president and chief digital officer at the Cleveland Clinic. said. “For patients. it’s good because you get a high-quality note after your visit. and you have a much better encounter because the provider isn’t typing the whole time.”.
The system is intended to support physicians rather than replace them. and it includes safeguards that patients have to be told about before recordings begin. Still, its success is not framed as a simple story of technology triumphing over paperwork. The clinic’s own leaders describe early hesitation—around accuracy and privacy—and then a gradual shift as more doctors used the tool and became confident in what it produced.
The pilot that won over skeptics
In 2024. Cleveland Clinic launched a pilot with 250 physicians. split into smaller groups. to evaluate five ambient listening products on accuracy. user experience. and helpfulness. The physician lead was Dr. Eric Boose, a family physician and associate chief medical information officer at the Cleveland Clinic.
Boose tested the technology during appointments with his own patients as part of the yearlong effort. He said many people were not ready for change when technology arrives in clinical settings. but his experience in the pilot was different: “Oftentimes. with technology. people aren’t ready for change. ” Boose told Business Insider. “In this case. we actually had people who were not part of the pilot program asking if they could have it.”.
At the end of the pilot, Cleveland Clinic selected Ambience’s AI platform based on its performance. In spring 2025, the software was disseminated to the Cleveland Clinic’s US-based clinicians. Training sessions were offered, but clinicians were told they were not required to use the AI tool.
Within the first 15 weeks, 4,000 clinicians were actively using it.
By August 2025, Cleveland Clinic said providers will have used the AI scribe to document and summarize 1 million patient encounters. Physicians who use the tool use it for about 76% of their scheduled office visits. Chandra tied that adoption to the way the pilot was built: “I think that because we built enough understanding and enthusiasm during the pilot. we excelled at adoption.”.
How the scribe listens, then writes—under physician control
Ambience’s AI scribe records the patient-physician conversation through a phone app. At the start, the physician enters their specialty into the app, and the AI adjusts what it focuses on when preparing reports.
Boose described how that works with examples: if the appointment is about sleep medicine, the AI might focus on retrieving details such as an individual’s bedtime habits. “It’s a very flexible tool in that it can adapt to what your specialty is,” Boose said.
At Cleveland Clinic, physicians review and approve the AI-generated content before it is entered into the electronic health record.
Patients also must provide verbal consent before the software is used. Boose said most patients have been open to it and appear to appreciate that it helps keep the appointment face-to-face rather than splitting attention between a doctor typing and speaking. He added that he has seen only limited refusal: “I think I’ve had maybe two or three patients decline over the past two years I’ve been using it.”.
The AI software generates a comprehensive, structured report in Epic, along with a patient after-visit summary. These are reviewed by the physician, who can edit for clarity and accuracy. It also provides patient instructions based on the discussion during the appointment.
Cleveland Clinic said the Ambience AI scribe reduced the time spent reviewing and writing notes by two minutes per appointment and 14 minutes per day.
Chandra said feedback from physicians points to a different kind of benefit—less fatigue from documentation: “They didn’t become doctors to be drowning in paperwork.” He described the effect as bringing “joy back to caregiving.”
But the clinic also keeps one foot on the brakes
Even with strong adoption, Boose acknowledged the technology isn’t perfect yet. He described it as a showcase of artificial intelligence rather than intelligence, emphasizing why physician review is essential.
A clinic spokesperson told Business Insider that an estimated 5,000 providers across the healthcare system are using an AI scribe.
Still, patients have questions, particularly about what happens to recordings. Boose said the recordings are held for about 30 days, then de-identified and unretrievable. “We want people to feel comfortable that their data is not living somewhere in perpetuity,” he said. He also said that if a patient is uncomfortable during an appointment, the physician can pause the AI recording.
Inside the clinic, the early reception wasn’t uniform. Boose said while some physicians were eager at the start, others had doubts about effectiveness and were nervous about AI hallucinations and emissions—issues Chandra told Business Insider everyone has to be “very careful about.”
The clinic’s leaders say that as physicians used the system more, their reaction changed. “Ultimately, at the Cleveland Clinic, as ‘physicians were using it more and more, they were kind of blown away,’” Boose said.
What comes next for Cleveland Clinic
Cleveland Clinic says it is interested in evaluating additional AI use cases. Those include AI agents that can query patient concerns before appointments and provide actionable post-appointment steps.
Boose summarized the overall direction in a way that mirrors the clinic’s framing from the start: “AI is going to make us more and more efficient. but it will never replace physicians.” He called the moment “a very exciting time for efficiency in healthcare. ” adding that “we haven’t had this big of a game changer in a long time that can make things smoother for physicians and patients.”.
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