Nurses spend up to 41% of their time buried in documentation. Now they can ask an AI assistant to find what they need instantly.
Ambience Healthcare just launched Chart Chat for Nursing, which it calls the first AI conversational tool built directly into electronic health records for hospital nurses. Cleveland Clinic is the first health system testing it out.
How does it work?
The tool connects directly to the hospital’s EHR system and lets nurses ask questions in normal language. They can pull information from:
- Physician progress notes
- Hospital policies
- Patient documentation
- Medical orders
- Recent lab results
Every answer comes with full citations showing exactly where the information came from. If the AI can’t find a clear answer or doesn’t have enough data, it tells the nurse directly instead of guessing.
The system has built-in safety checks including real-time quality monitoring and ongoing feedback from nurses using it.
Why does it matter?
“Nurses aren’t struggling with a lack of information, they’re drowning in it,” says Tanha Kabir, Ambience’s Head of Product. Research shows nurses can spend between 25% to 41% of their time on documentation alone.
Early users say the tool helps them understand patients better and saves significant time, especially with complex cases where patients have long hospital stays. Nurses find it particularly helpful for:
- Preparing patient handoffs between shifts
- Tracking care trends over time
- Getting quick answers to specific clinical questions
“The overall sentiment has been that this is a tool nurses are genuinely excited about and want to use, which is rare in healthcare technology,” Kabir notes.
The context
Ambience Healthcare launched in 2020 and builds AI tools for medical documentation and coding. The company raised $243 million in Series C funding last July, one of the biggest health tech raises of the year.
Most existing AI tools for nurses focus on documentation and were originally designed for doctors. Kabir says there’s no similar commercial AI tool available specifically for nurses’ workflow needs.
The company sees this as the first step in a broader plan to build more AI tools specifically for nursing staff. Cleveland Clinic’s pilot program will help shape what comes next.