Athenahealth, Abridge join on AI clinical documentation venture

Health care software company athenahealth has joined with Abridge, the leading generative artificial intelligence (AI) platform for clinical documentation.

The companies announced their plan to collaborate on seamlessly embedded, real-time ambient listening and generative AI for use in ambulatory care practices. This week, athenahealth and Abridge are participating in HIMSS 25, the annual conference and tech expo of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society.

“Today’s clinicians — particularly those in independent practices — are overwhelmed with regulatory, financial, and administrative burdens that get in the way of caring for patients,” athenahealth Chief Product Officer Paul Brient said in the companies’ joint announcement. “They need integrated, intuitive, and agile solutions that solve these problems and take away busy work, without adding more complexity.

“This is our primary focus at athenahealth, and we’re excited to partner with Abridge, a leader and innovator in this space, so that ambulatory practices of any size can access the latest and most innovative AI capabilities,” he said.

All the right notes

The companies are planning the joint effort to commence as Abridge joins athenahealth’s new Ambient Notes solution, which has been rolled out in limited release to more than 160,000 clinicians on the athenahealth network. As 2025 progresses, athenahealth will continue to widen its availability.

Ambient Notes allows industry-leading ambient solutions to embed directly into athenaOne,the company’s “all-in-one” medical software and services platform. The goal is to offer a seamless user experience for clinicians seeking simplicity and efficiency in clinical documentation, according to athenahealth.

“With Ambient Notes, clinicians can activate ambient listening, conduct a visit, then have AI-generated notes directly placed into the patient encounter for further review in seconds, all without leaving athenaOne,” according to the company’s official description. “Ambient Notes grants users access to the most cutting-edge AI technology to improve both the clinician and patient experience.”

Ready for primary care AI

In the announcement, the companies cited the recent study published by the American Academy of Family Physicians and Rock Health, which surveyed 1,267 physicians about their experiences using AI in their practices. A key finding: “Most respondents are using digital health tools daily, and they’re ready for AI,” said Rock Health’s analysis.

“We are excited to deepen our integration with athenahealth and provide a seamless experience that leads to more clinically useful, compliant, and billable clinical documentation at the point of care,” Abridge founder and CEO Shiv Rao, MD, said in the announcement. “Streamlining clinical and financial workflows for the many independent practices across the country will allow their clinicians to focus more on patient care.”

Growth for Abridge

The partnership announcement followed last month’s news that Abridge had raised a $250 million Series D investment, coinciding with the milestone of deployment in more than 100 health systems across the country. Abridge is now in use by tens of thousands of clinicians. So far in 2025, Abridge has announced new implementations with Akron Children’s, Endeavor Health, Inova, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Oak Street Health, a CVS Health company, Duke Health, Johns Hopkins, Mayo Clinic, and UNC Health.

“The investment will fuel additional development of AI capabilities and commercial growth to support broader applications,” according to Abridge’s publicly announced plan. That could include the company’s Contextual Reasoning Engine, point-of-care AI that produces more clinically useful and billable notes.

“Today, health care systems are plagued by incomplete clinical notes that delay billing processes, resulting in the loss of countless hours spent improving documents, often weeks or months after a patient visit,” Abridge’s announcement said. “Generating comprehensive, billable notes that support appropriate claims at the point of care creates administrative efficiencies, reducing costs and freeing doctors to focus more on patient care.”