Ambience Healthcare and Houston Methodist have launched a collaboration to bring AI to emergency departments and inpatient care, aiming to boost efficiency and improve patient care in two of healthcare’s most demanding settings.
Emergency and inpatient clinicians face some of the highest documentation burdens in healthcare, with ED clinicians reporting the highest burnout rates in the profession. Hospitalists similarly manage complex patient handoffs, high-acuity cases and detailed documentation needs — all while navigating complicated coding requirements.
While Ambience Healthcare’s platform has been deployed at several major health systems — including Cleveland Clinic, UCSF Health (San Francisco), St. Luke’s Health System (Boise, Idaho) and Memorial Hermann Health System (Houston) — the collaboration with Houston Methodist represents a first expansion into high-acuity settings.
“Healthcare providers in emergency and inpatient settings face extraordinary documentation burdens that take time away from complex patient care,” Ambience Healthcare CEO Michael Ng said. “Without addressing acute care settings, we would not have comprehensively addressed the needs of our health system partners.”
Building on several completed pilots, Ambience’s solution moves beyond simple dictation. The platform offers intelligent, specialty-specific documentation that adapts to different encounters — from admissions and discharges to procedural notes and medical decision-making. It also incorporates a sophisticated understanding of clinical coding requirements to reduce errors and ease the burden on physicians.
The platform integrates into the Epic EHR system, capturing provider-patient conversations and automating documentation in the background without adding to the administrative workload. Providers simply assign themselves to a patient, and the system handles the rest — no manual copy-and-pasting required.
“We are seeing initial success in replacing many functions formerly done by scribes,” said Christopher Ziebell, MD, medical director of the Houston Methodist Emergency Department. “The technology is incredibly accurate, and we look forward to testing the full capabilities of the system now that it is fully Epic integrated.”
Jordan Dale, MD, chief medical information officer and chief health AI officer at Houston Methodist, called the partnership a “first-of-its-kind endeavor for a health system.” He emphasized that while ambient AI has seen success in ambulatory care, this solution is designed specifically for the complexities of acute care environments.
As hospitals nationwide search for ways to combat burnout and improve clinical efficiency, the success of this collaboration could serve as a model. By automating much of the administrative work, Ambience aims to free clinicians to focus more fully on patient care — a goal that has become increasingly urgent.
With full Epic integration now live, Houston Methodist is eager to expand real-world testing and assess the platform’s impact.
“We are committed to finding new ways to support our clinicians with AI technology that enhances the patient-provider experience,” Dr. Dale said. “We are proud to be part of this first-of-its-kind endeavor for a health system.”
