Oracle Health is rolling out an artificial intelligence clinical documentation tool for its ambulatory customers, the electronic health record company said Monday.
Oracle said the tool will transcribe patient-clinician conversations and create draft notes within the EHR. The company had 13 of its ambulatory clinic customers test the tool beginning in October 2023, a month after it was first announced at its user conference. It is available for primary care, internal medicine and family medicine clinics.
Read more: How clinical documentation became an AI battleground
Companies selling clinical ambient AI documentation tools have quickly populated the sector aiming to reduce clinician burnout. The idea is to give clinicians the chance to talk with patients directly rather than having them stare at a computer screen while documenting in the EHR.
Dr. Jigar S. Patel, senior director of clinical product management at Oracle, said the company decided to build its own tool because Oracle can control how the tool interfaces with its EHR software. This allows clinicians to build more robust clinical notes, he said.
“I think we’ll stand up in that market and it's worth us getting into [the market] in the long run,” Patel said. “Building into the framework of the future medical record, that's a whole different animal. Only we will do that."
Oracle’s tool relies on Android and Apple devices to record conversations between patients and clinicians. The tool then uploads the conversation to the cloud and runs it through a generative AI model to produce a transcript for clinicians to review in the EHR.
Patel said the company plans to market the tool to providers using other EHRs in the future but did not provide a specific timeline. He also said the company would offer the tool to other specialists.
The roll out comes at a time when Oracle has lost ground to competitor Epic in the hospital EHR market. It did receive a win earlier this month when the company renewed its contract with Veterans Affairs Department for an additional 11 months. Oracle Chairman and Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison said in April the big tech company planned to move its world headquarters to Nashville as part of an increased focus on healthcare.
