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Microsoft Dragon Copilot, the ambient AI-powered medical scribe, will soon be available in athenahealth electronic health records. The clinical workflow tool will be made available to ambulatory physicians via athena's growing Ambient Notes suite in the first half of 2026, the company announced this week.
WHY IT MATTERS
The AI documentation scribe from Microsoft will be embedded directly into athenaOne EHR – which the cloud IT vendor touted this week as the only one on the market that allows individual providers to choose which scribe they want to use, under a single contract.
The decision to provide multiple options is meant to allow caregivers to tailor their usage of EHR tools in the ways that best support how they want to work.
"At athenahealth, we champion an open ecosystem," Paul Brient, athenahealth chief product and operations officer, said in a statement.
The decision to integrate Microsoft Dragon Copilot, which is currently used by more than 650 healthcare organizations, builds on previous collaborations between the two companies, said Kenneth Harper, general manager of Dragon product management at Microsoft Health and Life Sciences.
"Their clinicians can fully concentrate on delivering exceptional patient care while significantly reducing the administrative burden of clinical documentation," he said.
THE LARGER TREND
In 2024, athenahealth launched its Ambient Notes tool suite to allow customers to choose and test different ambient documentation tools, such as Suki, iScribe and Ambience, without requiring long-term commitments.
The company has since embedded several other AI-driven tools, including patient access and revenue cycle management automations.
In October, the company enhanced its RCM tools with AI that aims to improve the speed and quality of prior authorizations and claims processing, and added an AI-powered waitlist scheduling tool to improve patient engagement, the company said at the time.
When a practice receives a cancellation, the AI initiates texts to patients on the waitlist that inform them of the appointment opening.
ON THE RECORD
"Ambient technology is transforming how care is documented and delivered, freeing clinicians to focus more on their patients," Brient said in a statement.
Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.
