Clinical Pioneer University of Iowa Health Care Rolls Out Nabla to All Clinicians

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Sep 17, 2024, 07:30 ET

Clinical innovator UI Health Care turned to advanced ambient AI technology to ease administrative burdens and increase provider well-being by streamlining clinical documentation processes
Nabla is the leading ambient AI assistant in the U.S. market, designed to enhance the clinician experience by providing time back to focus on practicing medicine
UI Health Care clinicians reported a 26% decline in burnout during a five-week pilot program

BOSTON, Sept. 17, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Nabla, the leading ambient AI assistant for clinicians, today announced University of Iowa (UI) Health Care, Iowa's only comprehensive academic health system, has rolled out Nabla's ambient AI assistant system-wide following a successful pilot. By making advanced ambient AI technology available for all its clinicians, UI Health Care deepens its focus on leveraging advanced technology to improve patient care, clinician well-being, and the future of care delivery.

Physician well-being is more important than ever as work-life balance dissipates, largely due to time-intensive clinical documentation and administrative tasks. Managing and navigating EHR systems, which provide a digital version of a patient's paper chart, creates extensive administrative work. It is estimated that for every hour physicians spend directly clinical face time with patients, nearly two additional hours are spent on EHR and desk work within the clinic day. In a recent survey, when physicians were asked how to alleviate their work-life balance, an overwhelming 75% of respondents suggested reducing the administrative burden.

To address this issue, UI Health Care selected Nabla's ambient AI technology as part of its AI strategy aimed at improving patient care, physician well-being, and efficiency. Nabla summarizes patient encounters in real-time to generate comprehensive, structured clinical notes. Nabla is a supplemental AI tool that does not replace the judgment of UI Health Care's providers.

UI Health Care selected Nabla for a five-week pilot program that achieved 100 percent adoption and a 75 percent week-over-week engagement score among the clinicians who participated. Of the 2,300 visits that utilized Nabla, providers achieved a 4.3 out of 5 clinical note rating. UI Health Care also saw a 26% reduction in reported burnout rate among participants.

"We conducted an extensive search for an ambient AI solution that could move the needle with the clinical documentation process and experience," said James Blum, MD, Chief Health Information Officer and Associate Professor of Anesthesiology, University of Iowa Physicians. "As an academic medical center, it is critical for us to continue advancing clinical innovation to provide current care teams with better experiences and shape the medical field to be more attractive for future generations. We found Nabla's ambient AI technology helps us meet these goals and we look forward to seeing the benefits of rolling out the platform system-wide."

UI Health Care clinicians who are using Nabla ask patients for verbal permission to use it during their visit. The conversation is not recorded. The HIPAA-compliant software simply listens using speech-to-text technology and only documents the encounter for a brief period. From this documentation, the AI generates a draft note which the clinician then reviews, edits, and transfers to the patient's medical record.

For UI Health Care's system-wide launch, Nabla was integrated into Epic, enabling clinicians to create the note in one click without the need for manual copy and paste. Nabla's AI-powered features like Magic Edit and customization capabilities are helping streamline adoption and enhance existing workflows.

UI Health Care and Nabla will continue to collaborate to ensure the product is adopted and used properly by physicians and advanced practice providers (APPs) as well as the system's nurses and other clinicians. The team will create special features as needed for nurses and other workflows to accommodate their unique clinical documentation processes.

"It's inspiring to see firsthand how committed UI Health Care is to supporting and improving the well-being of its providers," said Alex LeBrun, co-founder and CEO of Nabla. "They care deeply about the clinical team experience, value technology's role in driving improvements and innovation across the care journey and share our mission to enhance the future of care delivery."

About Nabla
Nabla is the leading ambient AI assistant, reducing practitioner stress and improving patient care. Nabla produces AI-generated clinical notes in seconds from any encounter across all specialties. Powered by proprietary LLMs, fine-tuned to the medical field, Nabla's capabilities include AI-enabled medical coding identification and smooth EHR integrations.

The company's leadership includes Alex Lebrun (CEO), with over two decades of experience building AI products, and whose companies have been acquired by Nuance (VirtuOz) and Facebook (Wit.ai); Delphine Groll (COO) and Martin Raison (CTO). Ed Lee, MD, MPH, who was previously CIO at The Permanente Federation, recently joined Nabla as Chief Medical Officer. He heads Nabla's Clinical Advisory Board, formed by 20+ seasoned clinical leaders.

On the technological side, the company's advisors include Yann LeCun, VP & Chief AI Scientist at Meta, and Tony Fadell, inventor of the iPod and former Apple executive, among others.

Nabla has raised a total of $49M, its most recent fundraising being a $30M series B led by global venture capital firm Cathay Innovation. For more information, please visit: www.nabla.com.

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SOURCE Nabla