NextGen Healthcare announced that its AI-driven ambient listening solution NextGen Ambient Assist is now available to ophthalmologists and optometrists. NextGen Ambient Assist saves medical professionals up to 2 hours of documentation time per day by transcribing patient-provider conversations in real time and leveraging AI to summarize patient encounters within 60 seconds of a visit, the company stated in a press release. 
 
This latest release, the company says, is tailored to support the workflows of ophthalmology and optometry and to address the specific challenges and limitations of using ambient listening to document eye exams. NextGen Ambient Assist now captures details into organized fields for every section of the eye. Once the provider reviews the generated visit note and makes any necessary edits from their mobile device, it is delivered securely into the NextGen Enterprise electronic health record (EHR). 
 
Accessed through the NextGen Mobile application on the provider’s smartphone, NextGen Ambient Assist offers a clinical context feature that is familiar with conversational speaking and immediately recognizes medical acronyms, including those unique to eyecare. The solution also offers complete automation — after provider approval, no extra steps are required to copy and paste into the EHR. 

In addition, NextGen Ambient Assist also has an auto-deletion feature — to preserve client privacy, audio and transcripts are never stored or saved. Finally, based on the patient-provider conversation, NextGen Ambient Assist will enable decision support for specific diagnoses and relevant lab or imaging orders for provider review and approval.   
 
Demonstrations of NextGen Ambient Assist for ophthalmology and optometry will be available Oct. 18-21 in Chicago at the AAO's annual meeting (https://ng.nextgen.com/aao2024). Attendees can visit NextGen Healthcare’s booth (#2037) to experience the technology in-person.