Cleveland Clinic’s AI Scribe Bake-Off: How Ambience Healthcare Came Out on Top

The AI scribe market is getting crowded, but not all solutions are built the same. Cleveland Clinic put that idea to the test with an extensive five-way evaluation of AI scribe solutions. Ambience Healthcare (Ambience) emerged as the winner and secured a five-year exclusive partnership. Here’s why they won.

AI scribes have quickly become a must-have for clinicians. Recent studies from the American College of Radiology and OntarioMD have verified the workflow, operational, and clinical benefits of this type of technology. It is no wonder that healthcare providers are moving quickly to implement AI scribes.

Healthcare IT Today sat down with Nikhil Buduma, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at Ambience at the recent #ViVEvent in Nashville, TN. We waned to learn what makes their AI different and why Cleveland Clinic chose their solution.

Key Takeaways

1. AI that Adapts to Specialties. Ambience stood out because its AI adapts to different specialties rather than forcing a generic solution across departments.
2. Fixing Documentation at the Source. By considering how clinical notes are used in the revenue cycle process, Ambience’s AI ensures the documentation it generates will reduce billing and coding issues downstream.
3. Real-Time, No Cleanup Required. Unlike other solutions, Ambience generates structured, ready-to-sign notes immediately, eliminating extra work for physicians.

Rigorous Selection Process

Cleveland Clinic conducted a rigorous evaluation program with five of the leading AI scribe solutions throughout 2024. They evaluated the technology across more than 80 specialties and subspecialties.

“We are committed to finding innovative ways to support our providers and reduce administrative burden and burnout while enriching patient experience,” said Beri Ridgeway, M.D., Enterprise Chief of Staff at Cleveland Clinic in a press release. “Our clinicians reported their enjoyment with more face-to-face patient interaction, and that the software provided detailed notes that improved care coordination across specialties. Importantly, they also felt less burnout.”

“It was like a Great American Bake-Off,” commented Buduma.

Ambience won because their solution could handle the unique needs of different specialties and seamless fit into existing workflows.

AI Scribes Need to Be Adaptable

“What Cleveland Clinic found is that ambient listening isn’t one product—it’s like 50 different products,” Buduma explained. “You can’t take a primary care solution and force it into an emergency department or an oncology unit. The workflows, documentation, and decision-making processes are completely different.”

Ambience’s technology is built to adapt to each specialty, ensuring seamless adoption and usability across departments.

Considering the Needs of Non-Clinical Departments

Ambience Healthcare isn’t just focused on making life easier for clinicians—it’s thinking bigger.

Buduma emphasized that clinical notes shouldn’t exist in a vacuum; they need to serve multiple stakeholders across the healthcare system. “The notes we generate are structured, comprehensive, and designed to be useful beyond the clinician—to administrators, billers, and even patients.”

This broader approach ensures that AI scribes don’t just offload documentation but actively improve operational efficiency across multiple departments. For example, Ambience collaborated with revenue cycle teams to ensure the documentation generated from their AI platform supports accurate coding and billing.

“Cleveland Clinic realized that documentation errors at the point of care create downstream issues,” Buduma noted. “Bringing in Rev Cycle early in the evaluation process helped them see which solutions actually reduced errors versus creating more.”

Will Healthcare Adopt a Best of Breed Approach to AI?

One of the interesting questions posed to Buduma was whether he sees a future where vendors, particular EHRs, will allow customers to deploy their choice of AI solutions to power their systems or whether vendors will pick one AI dance partner and offer no choice.

Buduma’s response was surprising: “I think there is a short term and a long-term trend. In the short term, I see a multi-vendor approach to AI – with a goal of trying to understand the pros and cons of the various technologies before making a long-term platform decision. I think in the long-term it makes a lot of sense for an institution to pick one AI partner because of the synergies across different use cases.”

Building Trust in AI

Ambience’s success at Cleveland Clinic shows that AI scribes can be more than just a documentation tool—they can be a catalyst for better collaboration across healthcare teams. By tailoring their platform to serve clinicians, revenue cycle teams, and other stakeholders, they’re proving that AI documentation can be both clinically accurate and operationally valuable. The company’s emphasis on fitting into existing workflows is key — the fastest path to adoption is meeting users where they already are. As more organizations explore AI scribes, the takeaway is clear: the best solutions won’t just generate notes, they’ll generate trust.

Learn more about Ambience at https://www.ambiencehealthcare.com/

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