A recent study conducted at Emory Healthcare and Mass General Brigham has found that the use of ambient documentation technology, which utilizes generative artificial intelligence for clinical notetaking during patient-clinician interactions, can reduce burnout and improve clinician well-being. The results were published in JAMA Network Open.
The research indicated that clinicians using the technology, which operates as a listening application on phones or computers, reported improved experiences in practicing medicine. They were able to focus more on conversations with patients rather than typing notes.
At Emory Healthcare, the study observed a 30.7% absolute increase in well-being related to documentation after 60 days of using the technology. At Mass General Brigham, there was a 21.2% absolute reduction in burnout prevalence at 84 days.
“Physician burnout remains one of the most pressing challenges in health care, driven in large part by the administrative burden of documentation,” said Reema Dbouk, MD, primary care physician at Emory Healthcare and second author on the paper. “Ambient documentation technology offers a promising solution by reducing time spent on clerical tasks and allowing clinicians to focus more fully on patient care. Studying its impact on burnout is critical to understanding how this innovation can improve provider well-being, strengthen patient–provider relationships and enhance the overall efficiency of health care delivery.”
The pilot included 1,430 clinicians—557 from Emory Healthcare and 873 from Mass General Brigham—who used the listening technology during patient encounters in 2023 at Emory and in 2024 at Mass General Brigham. Participants completed surveys about their engagement with the tool: pre-survey and follow-up survey at 60 days for Emory (11% response rate), and pre-survey plus additional surveys at 42 and 84 days for Mass General Brigham (30.4% and 22% response rates).
Both attending physicians and advanced practice providers participated across both health systems; residents and fellows also took part at Emory. Nearly equal proportions practiced primary care: 28% at Emory (156/557) and 22% at Mass General Brigham (192/873).
“Following the success of our ambient documentation pilot, this technology has now been implemented across the institution at Emory,” said Dbouk. “Clinicians representing more than 45 specialties are actively using ambient documentation technology in the outpatient setting. Building on this momentum, implementation has recently expanded to the inpatient setting, where its impact and utility are currently being evaluated.” Dbouk is also an assistant professor in internal medicine at Emory University School of Medicine.
Additionally, Dbouk stated: “By enhancing both efficiency and human connection, this innovation represents a major step forward in creating a better health care experience for providers and patients alike.”
Authors noted several limitations to their study: it was noncontrolled involving only two academic medical centers with limited vendor participation; participation was voluntary; only those who completed both pre- and post-surveys were included; clinicians experiencing higher levels of burnout may have been less likely to respond throughout all survey points.
Funding for this study came from grants T15LM007092 from the National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health as well as GR0131434 from The Physicians Foundation.
Other coauthors from Emory include Rachel Silverman, Chris Holland, Ivana Salmikova, and Bryan Blanchette; while contributors from Mass General Brigham include Jacqueline G. You, Adam Landman, David Y. Ting, Sayon Dutta, Amanda J. Centi, Molly Macfarlane, Eran Bechor, Jonathan Letourneau, Gabrielle Choo-Kang, Esther H. Kim, Cordula Magee, Brian J. Lang, Laura Angelo, Michelle Frits, Christine Iannaccone Angela Rui,and David W.Bates.Additional coauthors are Julie C.Wang(Harvard)and Jackson Olin(Northeastern).
Emory Healthcare is Georgia’s largest academic health system with over 29,500 employees across eleven hospitals statewide.It maintains more than three thousand licensed beds,and over thirty-eight hundred physicians working within seventy specialties throughout metro Atlanta,the state,and regional affiliates.
