AI-powered Chart Assistant for clinical workflows

How AI-powered Chart Assistant benefits clinicians

Expanded uses of AI in healthcare technology is opening new doors for improving clinical workflows and patient care. At athenahealth, we’re excited to introduce Chart Assistant, an AI-powered capability within AI-native athenaOne® designed to enhance clinicians’ experience by transforming how they prepare for patient visits.

What is Chart Assistant?

Chart Assistant represents an evolution of the athenaOne clinical experience, building on time-saving features like document summaries and ChartSync. While document summaries condense vital patient information from charts, and ChartSync streamlines data synchronization across systems, Chart Assistant will act as an interactive AI clinical aide within the patient chart. This includes chatbot capabilities within the feature.

Our AI assistant, Sage, is embedded in the bottom right-hand corner of patient charts. Sage will be able to respond to questions and generate quick patient summaries, which can help reduce time spent searching for key information in the chart. Clinicians can also add their own notes or follow-ups for future encounters while engaging with Sage.

Chart Assistant doesn't merely aggregate external data—it will utilize generative AI to synthesize the data and respond to clinical queries in real time. For instance, a provider preparing to see a new patient types out distinct questions for Sage. These might include as, “What’s their cardiac health history?” or “Are there trends in their recent lab work?”  Instead of manually sifting through multiple progress notes, diagnostic reports, or scanned documents, the clinician can ask Sage to help surface concise insights highlighting relevant diagnoses, lab values, medications, and recent clinical events.

By extracting targeted, high-level patient information, AI assistants like Sage and Chart Assistant capabilities can help clinicians gain a clear picture heading into each encounter. That can also prove valuable when clinicians are on a tight schedule and need fast, digestible information in between multiple patient visits. 

Enhanced physician preparedness

Physician time may be healthcare’s most precious resource, and the amount of administrative prep clinicians must do to prepare for patient visits can be significant and inefficient¹. Chart Assistant directly addresses this challenge by serving as an AI-powered clinical aide that can help simplify pre-encounter preparation.

For example, with the help of Chart Assistant, a physician managing a patient with multiple chronic conditions—such as diabetes, hypertension, and chronic kidney disease—will receive a streamlined summary capturing medication changes, recent lab deviations, and relevant consultation notes ahead of the patient’s visit. They can choose to dig deeper into any or all summary elements. This might include asking Chart Assistant to pull data from disparate sources, always verifying the AI-generated insights for accuracy.

This not only has the potential to help reduce cognitive load, but also gives clinicians the opportunity to include follow-ups or notes they want to discuss with patients in the hopes of building accurate care plans during and after patient encounters. That, in turn, can help build trust and may help foster patient engagement moving forward.

Chart Assistant doesn't merely aggregate external data—it will utilize generative AI to synthesize the data and respond to clinical queries in real time.

Intelligent interoperability: making clinical data work smarter

The value of healthcare data lies not only in its availability but in its usability. Raw data exchange between disparate EHRs and clinical systems—while important—is insufficient if it overwhelms physicians or remains siloed. But leveraging AI-native capabilities within the EHR helps bring the idea of intelligent interoperability to fruition.

The AI-native Advanced Intelligence Layer in athenaOne empowers AI to standardize incoming data streams and distill them into clinically relevant insights within a single, integrated platform. By working across athenahealth’s expansive network of more than 160,000 connected providers, it supports the expansion of TEFCA (Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement) standards, supporting secure, HIPAA-compliant data sharing across organizations.

This intelligent interoperability means the system is actively refining the information flow to make it more digestible and clinically meaningful. Chart Assistant will be able to identify priority clinical events like hospital admissions or medication changes across various care settings, summarize them, and present the physician with a coherent narrative—regardless of the original source or format of the data.

The responsibility for updating problem lists within patient charts² can also pull providers away from quality time with patients. But incomplete problem lists may result in patient or care gaps that would otherwise force clinicians to sift through cumbersome data sets.

Chart Assistant’s ability to sift through and access discreet external patient details can help reduce the issue of incomplete problem lists. Summarizing recent encounters, imaging, and medication information can provoke additional questions clinicians may need to ask patients and more readily give insight into possible care gaps.

Through this approach, Chart Assistant can help reduce the complexity of navigating numerous clinical records and support cohesive care coordination between payers and providers.

Best practices for integrating Chart Assistant into clinical workflows

As with any innovative tool, successful adoption of Chart Assistant depends on thoughtful integration into clinicians’ daily routines. Here are some recommended best practices:

• Combine with existing tools: Chart Assistant will complement, rather than replace, existing features like document summaries and ChartSync. Leveraging these tools together ensures a comprehensive clinical picture.
• Provide feedback to refine performance: Chart Assistant users will be able to suggest contextual improvements, which supports ongoing AI model refinement.
• Maintain awareness of data governance: Physicians should remain mindful of HIPAA standards and athenahealth’s compliance framework while utilizing AI capabilities, ensuring all patient data activities align with privacy and security protocols.

By incorporating some of these best practices, healthcare providers can use Chart Assistant ethically, responsibly, and effectively.

The AI clinical aide to help clinicians navigate patient charts

Chart Assistant and Sage are poised to usher in a new era regarding how physicians interact with clinical data within athenaOne. By combining the power of generative AI with a deep understanding of clinical workflows, it can help deliver smarter, faster, and more precise access to patient information—enabling physicians to spend less time on paperwork and more time on patient care.

The capability advances athenahealth’s commitment to innovation, empathetic clinical experience, and intelligent interoperability. Physicians gain a trusted partner to help navigate complex data, simplify documentation, and improve the quality of every patient interaction.

We invite you to explore how Chart Assistant and Sage can help your clinical practice. Contact us today to schedule a personalized demo and see how it can transform your workflow and patient care.