How clinicians help guide athenahealth's AI development for the EHR
The EHR company is bringing together clinicians and tech experts to collaborate on developing AI capabilities to ease provider burden and enhance care delivery.
EHR companies are caught up in an AI arms race, each chasing the promise of the technology enhancing healthcare delivery. However, these efforts often omit the central figures in the healthcare delivery mechanism: the clinicians themselves.
To bridge the gap between clinicians and development of technology meant to ease their workflows, athenahealth has created an EHR AI CoLab. The co-innovation forum convenes a group of 20 clinicians and EHR 'superusers' monthly. At these meetings, CoLab members highlight challenges in clinician workflows and bring end-user feedback to the company. Thousands of clinicians across the athenahealth network participate in alpha and beta testing of AI capabilities being developed by the EHR vendor.
"We can co-develop with our users [through the CoLab], and more so than ever before, we can partner with our users, we can get their feedback and then instrument and implement that feedback directly in the product in real time," said Chad Dodd, athenahealth's vice president of product development.
The CoLab gives clinicians a voice in the AI development process, while athenahealth's engineers gain valuable insights into healthcare delivery challenges.
Member feedback illuminates tech needs
The EHR AI CoLab began in early 2026, and since then, athenahealth data scientists, engineers and product designers have worked closely with the group of health IT leaders to create and test various AI capabilities.
For instance, the CoLab provided feedback to enhance athenahealth's AI-native clinical encounter, which is now available to all clinicians on the athenaOne platform. At the heart of the AI-native clinical encounter is athenaAmbient, the company's ambient clinical documentation solution.
Liz Bauske, clinical information systems manager for Barrington Orthopedic Specialists and a CoLab member, noted that feedback from the CoLab played a key role in shaping the ambient AI solution.
"We provided a lot of feedback around diagnosis creation, minimizing duplicates and having settings," she said. "Initially, there really weren't any user preferences or settings that could be established. And now we do have some of those options, but all of this is continuing to evolve, too."
Similarly, the CoLab provided feedback about Sage, an AI-powered copilot built into athenaOne. Bauske shared that CoLab members pushed to enable saving questions in the tool. This helped standardize the most common questions used when reviewing a patient's chart.
"Initially, you had to type in a question, but [Sage] did not remember your question," she said. "And now we can create what are called text macros, so essentially a saved phrase and use that. And I can create that on an administrative level, and our staff can use them. And that's been really fantastic for our staff."
Another solution that is being tested with the CoLab is the AI-native clinical inbox. The tool offers insights and recommends next steps to help clinicians manage their tasks. Dodd shared that athenahealth's development teams are observing how clinicians use the tool and whether it is having the intended impact of reducing administrative work and increasing efficiency.
Ideas for new tools and features do not always flow from athenahealth to CoLab physicians. Dodd further noted. The CoLab shares the challenges physicians face with EHR usability.
One example is the challenge of reviewing the vast volume of data and information in patient charts. So, athenahealth created a problem-based summaries feature within the Sage Co-Pilot, which leverages AI to provide clinicians with quick access to the most relevant patient information. The feature is in the alpha testing process.
"The CoLab is changing both how we build our product, how we get feedback and the overall experience and what we expect to release out to the broader user base," Dodd said.
Why AI development needs clinicians
AI has the potential to solve some of the most persistent problems that clinicians face, which result in burnout and turnover. While AI development is a technological endeavor, having clinicians involved can boost the efficacy of the tools.
According to Dodd, the CoLab has brought together critical skill sets, resulting in personalized tools that clinicians want to use. While the clinicians are well-versed in patient care needs, they do not know how to use AI to meet those needs; meanwhile, the engineers and designers know the technology but not the clinical needs.
"When you bring the two together on a call, you give birth to this new customization, personalization element," Dodd said.
Those personalized tools that meet clinicians' unique needs ultimately help boost adoption, Bauske noted.
For instance, uptake of the Sage tool was not initially high in the orthopedic practice, she said. However, once athenahealth added the ability to save questions, adoption rose.
Keeping clinicians in the technology development loop also increases trust in AI, which can be hard to gain among clinical staff. Dodd underscored the hesitation among some clinicians who want to understand the technology before using it.
Helping to develop and test the product gives clinicians insight into how it works and the guardrails that may be needed.
"Something we really have to continue to be cognizant of is having governance over the use of AI technologies as an organization, both with our patients and our staff, and making sure that we have guardrails to protect both our staff and our patients," Bauske said. "So, we will continue to work with athenahealth to ensure that those guardrails are available to us and present and really visible for our providers if they need to be."
As the EHR AI CoLab continues to help test and refine AI tools, athenahealth plans to track usage metrics, including time spent reviewing patient charts and documentation, same-day encounter close rates and physician satisfaction.
AI has become an inescapable fixture of the U.S. healthcare system. But, to engage the technology's full potential, technology developers and healthcare providers must join forces, bringing their unique expertise together to create tools that are truly functional and effective,
"We've really tried to embrace AI technology," Bauske said. "We know it's here. It's not going anywhere. So, we need to learn how to grow with it and really partner with it."
Anuja Vaidya has covered the healthcare industry since 2012. She currently covers healthcare IT and innovation, including artificial intelligence, digital healthcare, EHRs and interoperability.
