The news: OpenNotes and Abridge are partnering to study how AI-generated visit summary notes can benefit patients.

• OpenNotes is a research initiative aimed at giving patients access to their own clinical notes written by healthcare providers, while Abridge uses generative AI to transcribe clinical conversations for documentation purposes.

Digging into the details: In the study’s initial phase, focus groups will be given visit summaries created by Abridge’s tech and evaluate them for usefulness, accessibility, and other effectiveness metrics.

• Currently, Abridge generates a structured clinical note as well as a visit summary for patients after each appointment.
• The summary is written at an 8th-grade reading level and provides information such as new diagnoses, medications, and next steps.

Why it matters: Many health tech companies have focused on how AI can reduce clinicians’ administrative burden, but there’s been comparatively little research on how patients can benefit from AI in their EHR.