Before talking about how AI connects with EHR systems, it’s important to know how AI is used in healthcare. AI systems, like Insight Health’s Lumi, help with routine tasks such as patient intake and follow-up conversations. Lumi can talk with patients by voice or text to gather health history and medication updates by itself. It works like a virtual assistant, letting doctors focus on more complex decisions.
Using AI agents can save a lot of time. For example, patient intake that usually takes 20 to 25 minutes is cut down to just 3 or 4 minutes. This extra time helps doctors plan better care and improves how the practice runs. Thousands of clinicians use Insight Health’s platform daily. It has handled over 100,000 clinical conversations autonomously. This shows AI can help reduce paperwork and speed up workflows.
Connecting AI with EHR systems is hard because of several reasons like different data formats, privacy rules, and vendor restrictions. For AI to work well everywhere, it must fit with many kinds of EHR platforms.
One of the biggest problems is that data from labs, pharmacies, and clinics come in different formats. This can confuse AI systems and cause missing or wrong patient information. Without common data standards, AI may not be able to use or update records properly.
Standards like HL7 and FHIR help, but not all vendors use the same versions. Because of this, AI systems need to be flexible to handle many types of data and rules.
Protecting patient privacy is very important when linking AI with EHRs. AI tools need strong security to avoid data leaks and follow laws like HIPAA. Healthcare groups must make sure AI runs inside safe limits, which can add cost and complexity. For example, Insight Health focuses on creating “safe AI” that doctors can trust while still automating routine tasks.
Many EHR providers use their own formats or limit data sharing. This makes it hard for AI to work across different systems. To improve this, healthcare organizations should ask their EHR vendors to support open APIs that follow national standards like FHIR. Otherwise, AI integration will stay limited and fragmented.
Even with challenges, new technology offers ways to improve how AI and EHRs work together.
Cloud technology makes it easier to handle a lot of data and add AI features in EHRs. Cloud-based EHRs let clinics share data quickly across locations. They also often include security tools that protect data from hackers and meet privacy laws.
Practices with many sites or involved in care groups like ACOs find cloud-based EHRs helpful for AI integration and better data access.
Using open APIs that follow FHIR standards helps with predictable data sharing. Insight Health’s AI works with several popular EHRs, including athenahealth, NextGen, AdvancedMD, DrChrono, and Office Practicum. This shows how open, standardized connections let AI access patient data, update records, and manage follow-ups in real time.
They are also working on integration with Epic, one of the most common EHRs in the U.S., aiming for wider use.
Some new tech like blockchain can improve data sharing by making records secure and hard to change without permission. Blockchain lets patients and providers share medical information safely and keeps a clear history.
Although still being tested, blockchain might help solve some privacy and security issues when linking AI with EHRs.
AI does more than collect data; it can also automate both clinical and office tasks. For example, Simbo AI helps with phone answering and scheduling to improve how medical offices work.
AI chatbots talk to patients before visits to gather health histories and symptoms without needing a doctor. This cuts down the time doctors spend on routine paperwork. Lumi is one such AI that reduces intake from about 20 minutes to 3 or 4 minutes. This lets doctors spend their time on important care decisions.
AI tools that understand many languages help patients from different backgrounds. This makes it easier for everyone to communicate clearly and provide correct health details. It is important in many parts of the U.S. where people speak many languages.
Companies like Simbo AI help automate front-office tasks like answering phones and scheduling appointments. AI reduces missed calls and gives faster responses. This lets staff focus more on patients instead of routine tasks.
For practice managers, automating these jobs can increase how much work gets done, improve patient satisfaction, and lower labor expenses.
Many doctors spend extra time after work doing paperwork called “pajama time.” AI that handles documentation before and after visits helps reduce this burden.
Insight Health’s CEO, Jaimal Soni, says providers save 10 to 20 minutes per visit on average. This can help reduce doctor burnout and improve work-life balance.
Healthcare leaders in the U.S. face special pressures from rules, patient diversity, and rising costs. Using AI with EHRs needs careful thought.
Connecting AI with EHR systems in the U.S. means working through technical, legal, and practical challenges. Still, cloud solutions, open APIs, and new tech like blockchain offer good ways forward.
Using AI for routine clinical and office tasks can help healthcare workers do their jobs better, reduce their workload, and provide better patient care. For administrators, owners, and IT managers, these changes offer clear options to improve managing medical data and meet today’s healthcare needs.
Insight Health’s AI platform uses patient-facing AI agents to handle routine clinical tasks such as patient intake, managing patient histories, referral processing, and follow-up, aiming to reduce clinician documentation burden and improve patient engagement.
The AI offloads routine clinical work by conducting virtual patient screenings and history intake before visits, allowing providers to focus on care plans and reducing in-person visit time significantly, sometimes saving up to 20-25 minutes per visit.
Lumi is Insight Health’s flagship AI agent that communicates with patients via voice or text to gather detailed disease-specific histories, update medication lists, and manage autonomous patient follow-ups, acting similarly to a physician assistant.
Insight Health builds ‘safe AI’ with strong foundations in safety, security, and trust, including clinician oversight as a safety net, readiness for evolving regulatory standards, and adaptable frameworks to meet future AI governance.
Insight Health’s AI technology integrates with multiple EHR vendors such as athenahealth, NextGen, AdvancedMD, DrChrono, Office Practicum, and has an Epic integration in development.
Providers save on average 10 to 20 minutes per visit, and the platform significantly reduces after-hours charting and ‘pajama time’ by offloading routine documentation to AI agents.
Insight Health was founded by two doctors, Pankaj Gore, M.D. and Eric Stecker, M.D., serving as co-chief medical officers, alongside two product leaders, Jaimal Soni (CEO) and Saran Siva (CTO), with backgrounds at Segment and Twilio.
The platform offers voice-to-voice interaction, supports multiple languages, and accommodates diverse age groups and technology comfort levels to ensure easy and natural engagement for all patients.
Insight Health offers an end-to-end solution that covers the full clinical workflow—from screening and referral to in-visit assistance and post-visit follow-up—integrating these steps to create a seamless patient-provider experience without fragmented point solutions.
To date, over 1,500 clinicians across multiple specialties in private practices and health systems have used the platform daily, with more than 100,000 autonomous clinical conversations completed, indicating growing market penetration.