When I started my medical training in 2000, everything was still done on paper. We would begin rounds at 5:30 a.m., which meant I had to arrive by 5:00 a.m. to flip through binders of handwritten notes, vitals, and lab printouts. Hastily scribbled orders had to be decoded by nurses and pharmacists as if they were archeologists.
After rounds, we typically operated all day and checked on our patients later that evening before heading home. Somewhere in between, we documented every decision we made. The pressure to document while caring for patients was unrelenting.
This burden only seemed to grow throughout my career, as new systems brought better information and more accuracy, but ultimately, added another layer of work. But now, for the first time in two decades, I’m seeing a technology that actually removes work instead of adding to it.
In the early 2010s, electronic health records (EHRs) had become the new hot topic in healthcare and were truly the first seismic technology shift that I experienced during my career. For the first time, medical histories were accessible to the entire staff, and everything was easy to read and understand, which ultimately improved patient safety. If a patient landed in my ICU after a car crash, I’d be able to see a primary care note from across town; it was magical.
However, this came with a trade-off few of us were prepared for: EHRs drastically increased the volume of documentation. Our notes became billing instruments, putting even more pressure on the physician. I often found myself writing notes late into the evening, sometimes falling asleep at my laptop. To measure the impact of these notes, I ran the numbers in 2015 and found my evening documentation alone generated roughly $300,000 in annual revenue for my hospital. The burden was insurmountable sometimes. Several colleagues were weeks or months behind on their notes, but none of us could see a technological solution.
The only ideas on the horizon were diagnostic tools like IBM Watson, which captured industry imagination but had no effect on the real bottleneck in everyday clinical work. Unfortunately, this was the status quo for all doctors.
The first meaningful shift since the EHR
Two decades later, ambient technology may finally be giving back the time we lost to paperwork. Unlike the EHR, which replaced one problem with another, ambient AI addresses the actual bottleneck: the daily grind of documentation. For the first time, technology is not adding to the workload – it’s decreasing it, which sounded too good to be true. A tool that would alleviate the daily grind and let clinicians focus on care? A miracle.
Today, most ambient tools are used in outpatient settings for note creation. Still, their impact is already comparable to the other transformative shifts we’ve ever seen in healthcare: smartphones enabling virtual care, patient portals reconnecting people to their own records, and telehealth reintroducing the house call. Ambient AI now belongs in that lineage because it targets a foundational challenge rather than a niche one.
If history is any guide, the most significant breakthroughs in healthcare weren’t flashy when they arrived. They were simple, reliable tools that solved real friction at scale.
Why the moment is now
Research shows ambient AI is no longer an experiment. Modern solutions can create notes, execute orders, and generate discharge instructions without ever having to turn to a keyboard. These enhancements reduce coding errors, standardize documentation quality, and finally give clinicians room to think and care for their patients again.
What is most encouraging to me is not that the technology works, but that it alleviates the mental workload that is a part of every clinician’s day. For the first time in years, we can truly see a patient without feeling immediately behind. We can be fully present and tune in to the needs and nuances we too often miss when we’re distracted, frantically trying to remember all the details.
Presence is the greatest gift we can give our patients, but the rarest commodity in modern medicine. The chance to be present and truly see our patients is why ambient AI adoption does not feel forced or compliance-driven; it’s earned.
Adoption of this technology will continue to accelerate because it aligns with how clinicians want to practice rather than how systems want us to document. In twenty years, I have rarely seen that alignment, and it is why this moment feels fundamentally different.
Building trust through evidence
Clinicians are skeptical, and for good reason. We trust data, not demos and empty-promise pitches. That is why unbiased research is the linchpin for adoption.
Industry-academic partnerships are critical as ambient sweeps across the nation. These partnerships create shared accountability and commit to rigorous validation, allowing industry to earn clinicians’ trust based on evidence of quality and value.
A decade from now
If ambient AI evolves the way the EHR did, but without repeating its mistakes, the next 5 to 10 years could transform healthcare. Documentation will become background noise instead of the center of gravity in patient care. Coding and billing will become byproducts of care rather than additional burdens. Clinicians will spend their mental energy on reasoning rather than record-keeping.
In two decades at the bedside, I’ve seen technologies overpromise, underdeliver, and sometimes quietly transform the world. Ambient AI is the first breakthrough since the EHR, with the potential to fundamentally change how clinicians practice. For the first time, the technology is assistive and invisible while giving clinicians the space to practice medicine.
Photo credit: Ridofranz, Getty Images
Sudha Jayaraman, MD, MSc, FACS, serves as the Medical Director for Clinical Strategy and Research at Suki, one of the leading ambient AI companies in the United States. She is a practicing double-boarded surgeon and ICU physician with a background in public health and more than 15 years of experience in clinical care, health systems research, device and health tech and global health. She came to Suki from the University of Utah where she was a full Professor for 5 years and held the Clifford C. Snyder, MD Far Eastern Presidential Endowed Chair. Over the course of her career, Dr. Jayaraman has authored more than 110 scientific publications and book chapters, delivered over 200 lectures at international, national, and regional conferences, and mentored more than 80 individuals across all stages of training—spanning multiple professions, disciplines, institutions, and countries. She has been funded by the NIH for the last decade and has led a major NIH-funded, multi-country, cross-functional team that developed and implemented a novel digital health platform for emergency communication and coordination in East Africa. She also contributes to the World Health Organization’s standards on emergency medical services. Dr Jayaraman is deeply committed to transforming healthcare through technology.
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