Ambient AI may mean the difference between success and survival, says LCMC Health System’s CMIO For some health systems looking to use AI, cost plays second fiddle to survival. At LCMC Health, a six-hospital non-profit operating in and around New Orleans, the shadow cast by Ochsner Health looms large. In order to stay competitive, the health system has to be on the cutting edge of AI integration. Especially with ambient AI. “We had to get this to our doctors,” says Damon Dietrich, MD, who’s been LCMC Health’s System Chief Medical Information Officer for roughly a decade. “It wasn’t about seeing more patients or making more money.” “We are mission-critical about this,” he says. “This is about physician burnout, well-being, [and] the burden of documentation. … We have to do this to stay relevant and competitive in our market. We’re going to lose doctors to our competitor. They’re going to come in and hire them.” The Value of ‘Bake-Offs’ The health system jumped into the ambient AI sandbox back in 2024, launching three-month pilots with a handful of companies to test how the technology best fits into clinical workflows. By April of last year they’d settled on Nabla, which had the added advantage of synching with their Epic EHR platform, and by September they were going live. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(“dfp-ad-hl_native1”); }); It’s a strategy that many healthcare organizations – large and small – are embracing, especially as the AI market grows and the technology becomes more sophisticated. Health systems are turning to…
