Many doctors enter the medical profession with a genuine desire to help patients. However, the contemporary healthcare landscape often burdens physicians with extensive administrative tasks—such as navigating electronic health records (EHRs), writing documentation, managing billing codes, obtaining prior authorizations, and overseeing utilization management. Alarmingly, this administrative workload can eclipse the time doctors dedicate to direct patient care, contributing to physician burnout, operational inefficiencies, and ultimately poorer patient outcomes.
To combat these issues, Ambience Healthcare is introducing an innovative solution: an AI-driven platform designed to automate routine clinical tasks before, during, and after patient visits. “We create co-pilots to empower clinicians with AI capabilities,” explains Ambience CEO Mike Ng, who co-founded the company alongside Nikhil Buduma. Their technology integrates seamlessly into existing EHR systems, allowing clinicians to redirect their focus towards what truly counts: delivering the highest standard of patient care.
Ambience’s product lineup simplifies numerous processes, including pre-charting, real-time AI scribing, and navigating the complex web of insurance billing codes. The platform can also provide after-visit summaries in multiple languages, ensuring that patients and their families remain informed and aligned post-appointment.
Ambience is already making strides in approximately 40 major healthcare institutions, including UCSF Health, the Memorial Hermann Health System, and St. Luke’s Health System, among others. Clinicians across various specialties and settings, from emergency departments to oncology wards, are turning to Ambience, benefiting from its multilingual capabilities and coverage of over 100 specialties. According to the founders, clinicians utilizing Ambience are able to reclaim two to three hours daily that would otherwise be spent on documentation, report decreased burnout, and foster stronger, higher-quality relationships with their patients.
From Problem to Product
Mike Ng’s journey into healthcare innovation began in 2012 with a personal experience: a back fracture that led to misdiagnosis and improper care. Through this ordeal, he gained valuable insights into the U.S. healthcare system and recognized a harsh reality—most physicians spend just 27% of their day directly caring for patients. The rest is consumed by documentation, administrative work, and the labyrinth of billing procedures.
In 2014, Ng enrolled in the MIT Sloan School of Management. It was there that he met Buduma during an entrepreneurial celebration. Their shared interest in healthcare and entrepreneurship led them to collaborate on courses like “Building an Entrepreneurial Venture” and “Scaling Entrepreneurial Ventures.” “MIT proved to be an exceptional platform for understanding what constitutes a robust company and the essential foundations for creating one,” Ng reflects.
Buduma’s background also shaped his perspective on healthcare challenges. After immigrating to the U.S. from India and facing numerous health issues, he witnessed firsthand the struggles his parents encountered while navigating the medical system. While pursuing his undergraduate degree at MIT, he delved into AI research and authored an early textbook on modern AI and deep learning.
In 2016, the duo launched their first venture, Remedy Health, in San Francisco, pioneering an AI-powered healthcare platform. By actively hiring clinicians and managing patient interactions, they gained profound appreciation for the hurdles healthcare organizations confront. They were also among the first to implement the transformer architecture, developed within Google, to support clinicians at Remedy. This experience positioned them well within the evolving AI landscape, leading to connections with others in the field, including those working on early iterations of generative models like ChatGPT.
Recognizing a gap between general AI models and specialized healthcare solutions, they concluded in 2020 that a dedicated team should focus on refining AI technologies for clinical applications. Thus, Ambience was born, initially featuring an AI-driven scribe that records doctor-patient interactions while adhering to HIPAA regulations for patient confidentiality. The team recognized the necessity of customizing AI models for various medical fields and gradually expanded their specialties through years of refinement.
A pivotal realization emerged: documentation was not just vital for clinicians; it also served the administrative functions behind revenue cycles. “Documentation is essential not only for doctors but also for back-office teams,” Buduma emphasizes. Acknowledging the complexity of billing codes that change annually and vary by specialty, they redesigned their algorithms to be aware of these coding intricacies.
Building out features for clinician referrals and patient visit summaries followed. “Before Ambience, patients relied on their notes to remember what happened during their visits,” Buduma notes. The platform allows patients and their families to receive a comprehensive summary of the consultation shortly after leaving the clinic, enriching their overall experience and ensuring greater retention of information.
Democratizing Healthcare
By enhancing physician efficiency, Ng and Buduma believe they are addressing the systemic shortage of healthcare professionals projected to worsen in the coming years. “Access remains a crucial issue in healthcare,” Ng remarks. “For instance, rural Americans face a 40% higher rate of preventable hospitalizations, largely due to limited access to specialty care.”
As Ambience helps healthcare systems navigate tight financial margins through streamlined administrative processes, the founders aspire to a broader objective—expanding access to quality clinical expertise nationwide. “There is significant potential to democratize the expertise found in leading academic medical centers across America,” Ng argues. “Currently, the U.S. lacks enough specialists to serve rural populations adequately. Our aim is to scale the knowledge of top specialists through advanced AI infrastructure, particularly as these technologies continue to mature in clinical intelligence.”
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