Physicians use Alexa at home and Siri on their iPhones. When will they have the same experience in the hospital or clinic with the EHR?
While EHR vendors offer voice activation today, health system IT leaders told Becker’s clinician adoption hasn’t been significant yet but they expect the technology to become widespread in the coming years.
“While speech dictation is now common across most major EHRs, true conversational interaction remains limited,” said Mathew Tharakan, MD, chief medical information officer at Stony Brook (N.Y.) Medicine. “Most systems can transcribe notes, but far fewer allow clinicians to naturally say things like, ‘Show me the latest labs,’ ‘Trend this patient’s hemoglobin,’ or ‘Order a CBC for worsening anemia.'”
But he said that’s starting to change through pilot programs and more voice command capabilities from EHR vendors like Oracle Health. Epic also has voice activation — its Hey Epic! feature was released in 2018, Chart with Art in late 2025.
“Healthcare is following the same path consumer technology did a decade ago — just more cautiously because the stakes are much higher,” Dr. Tharakan said. “Siri and Alexa made voice interaction feel natural in everyday life. Healthcare now has to make it clinically reliable, secure, and safe.”
He predicts large-scale adoption in three to five years, as long as EHR developers focus on medical accuracy, privacy, and seamless workflow integration. Clinicians may even need to use earphones to interact privately with the EHR in busy healthcare settings.
“In many ways, this is the future of human-computer interaction in healthcare,” Dr. Tharakan said. “‘Star Trek’ imagined conversational computing decades ago, and now we are finally approaching it. The best technology eventually becomes almost invisible. Voice-enabled EHRs have the potential to move clinicians away from keyboards and back toward patients.”
As a radiologist, Mitchell Schnall, MD, senior vice president for data and technology solutions at Philadelphia-based Penn Medicine, has used voice-recognition reporting for years, allowing him to focus on imaging rather than navigating a mouse over a screen.
“I suspect voice navigation of the mainstream EHR will have a similar impact on a larger scale,” he said. “In our department, individuals figured out voice navigation workflows that worked well for them, and these were emulated by colleagues working in a similar context. I personally adopted a few ‘tricks’ from some of the other radiology faculty at Penn. I suspect this will happen similarly as these tools become more and more commonplace. Ultimately, as voice activation of the EHR becomes more commonplace, and as providers become more comfortable, it will become how we do our work.”
Penn Medicine has its own experiment with voice coming up soon — when it launches without keyboards.
“Voice activation is available in many EHR platforms today, but availability alone hasn’t translated into meaningful adoption,” said Brett Oliver, MD, chief medical information officer at Louisville, Ky.-based Baptist Health. “Most clinicians have not found traditional, command-based voice activation particularly valuable because using voice to navigate the EHR or execute tasks is not how they typically work during patient care.”
Voice has had a more meaningful impact with ambient documentation, as it fits more naturally into the medical visit, where providers and patients are already conversing, Dr. Oliver said.
“For voice technology to become truly helpful and commonplace, it needs to perform clinically meaningful tasks in ways that align with how care is delivered,” he said. “As these tools continue to mature and integrate more seamlessly into the EHR, adoption will be driven less by training alone and more by whether the technology genuinely improves the clinical experience.”
Clinicians are also using voice to retrieve EHR data, navigate charts and place orders, including at Houston Methodist, where hundreds of providers employ the tools, said Michelle Stansbury, vice president of IT applications and associate chief innovation officer.
“While voice technology itself is mature, tight integration with the EHR remains challenging,” she said. “Without this, organizations risk duplicative work and data quality issues. Equally important is workflow redesign. The transition is not simply a technology implementation but a shift in how clinicians document care, moving from a model of documenting after the encounter to one where documentation occurs during the conversation through ambient listening. This requires new clinical workflows, as well as changes to note ownership and review processes.”
Peoria, Ill.-based OSF Healthcare is also moving slowly on incorporating voice into the EHR. “I would expect to see more broad adoption to start at the end of 2026 and into 2027 as the technology and number of commands mature,” said CIO David Hall, MD.
Newark, Del.-based ChristianaCare is expanding more into voice as the organization adopts Epic. “Voice technology is an important part of that future,” said Robert Hartmann, vice president of EHR transformation at the health system. “Today, it’s primarily enhancing documentation workflows, but over time I expect it to become a more integrated and intuitive part of how caregivers interact with technology overall.”
Rapid advancements in AI, natural language processing and ambient listening technologies will continue driving the growth in voice-activated EHR tools beyond simple dictation, he said.
“Over time, I believe caregivers will increasingly interact with AI-powered systems through natural conversation rather than relying entirely on manual navigation and documentation,” Mr. Hartmann said.
Julie Eastman, senior vice president and CIO of Vancouver, Wash.-based PeaceHealth, said voice activation is “real and advancing,” though still “early in adoption.”
“Looking ahead, we see meaningful potential in our partners’ roadmaps for capabilities such as conversational search, decision support and structured data capture,” she said. “Scaling these tools responsibly will require smart investments in technologies that are reliable, quality-forward, governance-led and trusted by clinicians.”
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