Clinical Innovation UNC Health Expands Use of Abridge AI Technology to Enhance Patient and Clinician Experience
Clinical Innovation UNC Health, one of the largest and most comprehensive healthcare systems in the Southeast, is taking a significant step toward improving the quality of patient care and easing the administrative burden on clinicians by expanding the use of Abridge, an AI-powered technology designed to enhance clinical conversations. This cutting-edge technology will be rolled out across the organization’s network of thousands of clinicians, providing a tool that promises to streamline the note-taking process and transform the clinician-patient experience for the better.

According to Dr. Sachin Gupta, Chief Medical Officer for the UNC Physicians Network, Abridge is a game-changing technology that is set to become foundational to UNC Health’s operations moving forward. He stated, “Abridge is a genuinely transformative technology, and it’s going to be the foundation of what we do going forward.
Clinical Innovation UNC Health is committed to making our clinicians’ lives easier and improving the patient and clinician experience. This is a big win for us in those areas.” Dr. Gupta also emphasized that the technology will not be mandatory for all, as clinicians and patients who prefer not to use it can opt out. The decision to implement Abridge was partly influenced by its strong policies surrounding patient safety and privacy, ensuring that both patients and clinicians remain protected throughout the process.
The adoption of Abridge follows a thorough and successful pilot evaluation involving 100 clinicians from various specialties and care settings. This extensive evaluation helped UNC Health determine that Abridge was the ideal enterprise-wide solution for ambient, AI-powered clinical documentation. With the results of the pilot evaluation in hand, Clinical Innovation UNC Health is now moving forward with plans to introduce Abridge technology to its physicians and advanced practice providers across North Carolina beginning in early February.
Enhancing Clinician Satisfaction and Patient Care
Clinical Innovation UNC Health is committed to improving clinician satisfaction by reducing the time spent on documentation, which has become a significant concern for healthcare professionals across the nation. Clinical note-taking is time-consuming and often detracts from the clinician’s ability to provide hands-on care to their patients. By integrating Abridge’s AI-powered documentation tools, Clinical Innovation UNC Health aims to reduce the time spent on administrative tasks, allowing clinicians to focus more on patient care.
Dr. Matt Ewend, Chief Clinical Officer at Clinical Innovation UNC Health, highlighted the goal of the initiative: “Our goal is to improve the satisfaction of our clinicians by reducing the time spent on clinical note-taking while maintaining UNC Health’s high quality of patient-centered care.” One pilot user remarked on the profound impact that Abridge had on their workflow, saying, “It’s been a game changer. I can complete my work while I’m at work and not have to work from home. I’m in heaven. Now, I don’t have a laptop between me and my patient anymore. I feel more connected.”
This feedback underscores the technology’s potential to not only improve clinician productivity but also foster a stronger connection between patients and their healthcare providers. By eliminating the need for clinicians to divide their attention between patients and computer screens, Abridge offers a more fluid and natural patient interaction, which is key to fostering trust and improving outcomes.
AI-Powered Documentation to Support Clinicians
The power of Abridge lies in its ability to transform patient-clinician conversations into structured, easily digestible clinical notes in real-time. This sophisticated AI technology uses speech recognition to automatically detect the care setting, specialty, and language of the conversation, generating clinical documentation without requiring manual input from the clinician. As a result, clinicians can focus entirely on the patient, rather than spending time transcribing notes or updating electronic health records (EHRs).
Dr. David McSwain, Chief Medical Informatics Officer at Clinical Innovation UNC Health, elaborated on the significance of this innovation: “Abridge transforms patient-clinician conversations into structured clinical notes, enabling clinicians to focus on patient care rather than documentation. This implementation aligns with UNC Health’s priority of promoting ease of practice and reducing administrative burden for its physicians and advanced practice providers.”
In addition to its real-time capabilities, Abridge’s deep integrations with leading electronic health records (EHRs) streamline workflows, ensuring that all clinical documentation is automatically mapped into the system. This integration helps eliminate the need for redundant data entry and allows for more efficient management of patient records. The system uses auditable AI to map clinical notes to the ground truth of the conversation, which helps clinicians quickly trust and verify the documentation produced by the AI. The result is a faster, more accurate process for Clinical Innovation clinical note-taking that doesn’t compromise the quality of care.
A Partnership for the Future of Healthcare
Abridge’s partnership with UNC Health represents a significant milestone in the ongoing effort to leverage artificial intelligence to improve healthcare systems. As Dr. Shiv Rao, CEO and Founder of Abridge, noted, the company is committed to designing AI solutions that address the complex needs of large health systems like Clinical Innovation UNC Health.
“At Abridge, our AI scientists and clinicians are committed to designing trusted solutions that meet the complex and evolving needs of large health systems like UNC Health,” Dr. Rao explained. “We are privileged to partner with Clinical Innovation UNC Health to improve the relationship between patients and clinicians and allow clinicians more time to interact with their patients.”
By using Abridge, Clinical Innovation UNC Health hopes to set a new standard for what it means to be a clinician in the modern healthcare environment. The ability to reduce the administrative burden of documentation while improving the quality of patient interactions is crucial not only for the well-being of clinicians but also for the overall success of healthcare systems. For years, healthcare professionals have struggled to balance the demands of documentation with the need to provide compassionate, patient-centered care. Abridge’s AI technology offers a solution that benefits everyone involved, from the clinicians to the patients themselves.
The Future of Healthcare Documentation
Looking forward, the implementation of Abridge at UNC Health represents a broader trend toward AI-driven solutions in healthcare. As the technology continues to evolve and improve, it is likely that more healthcare systems across the nation will adopt similar AI-powered documentation tools to help ease the strain on clinicians while improving the quality of care. The move toward ambient AI-powered documentation is part of a larger push to integrate artificial intelligence into various aspects of healthcare, from diagnostics to patient care, and ultimately, to the overall healthcare experience.
The implementation of Abridge technology is a clear indication that UNC Health is committed to staying at the forefront of innovation in healthcare. By choosing to work with Abridge, the organization is not only embracing a powerful technological tool but is also making a significant investment in the future of its clinicians and patients. As the healthcare landscape continues to evolve, it is innovations like these that will help create a more efficient, patient-centric, and sustainable system for years to come.