Overview
- The company introduced athenaAmbient, an ambient digital scribe embedded in athenaOne that drafts notes, diagnoses and prescriptions from clinician‑patient conversations.
- It also unveiled Sage, a clinical copilot that answers patient‑specific questions from the chart and is currently trained on ChatGPT with an architecture designed to swap large language models.
- User testing is scheduled to begin in February 2026 for athenaAmbient, with the broader AI‑native clinical encounter entering testing in the first half of 2026 and rolling out through routine updates.
- The features will be auto‑added to clinician workflows subject to patient consent, and clinicians will be able to toggle the AI capabilities on or off during use.
- Athenahealth describes ambient scribing as a foundational step toward AI offerings in coding, prior authorization and revenue cycle, as major EHR vendors expand similar tools and KLAS research reports gains from ambient technology.