Comparing Ambient AI Scribes with Lisa Stump of Mount Sinai
This is part of our weekly executive insights series where Elion CEO Bobby Guelich speaks with healthcare leaders about their tech priorities and learnings. For more, become a member and sign up for our email here.
Can you provide a quick overview of your role?
My role spans digital strategy, infrastructure, business, educational and clinical applications, data reporting and analytics, and our virtual and digital platforms in support of patient care, research, and education.
What are your top priorities for 2025?
A few major areas:
Data Reporting & Analytics: Our organization produces tons of data, but has a really distributed approach to reporting across the organization. So we’re working on strengthening governance around common data definitions and reporting to improve decision-making.
Enterprise Technology Modernization: Completing the Epic EMR rollout across our hospitals and optimizing workflows following a recent ERP implementation. Assessing and creating a multi-year plan for technology in the academic environment.
Ambient Technology: We’ve completed a pilot with one of the vendors in that space and plan to do a crossover analysis of two of the other vendors.
Revenue Cycle Automation and Optimization: Leveraging AI and automation to standardize a historically fragmented revenue cycle.
AI Strategy & Innovation: Partnering with Mount Sinai’s newly launched Department of AI & Human Health and AI research center to drive safe, effective AI adoption in healthcare.
Let’s dig into ambient intelligence. How are you approaching vendor selection?
I’ve tracked others’ pilots in this space, and I think we may be one of the first to directly compare Nuance, Suki, and Abridge. We completed Phase 1 with Nuance DAX, and physicians were adamant: “Don’t take this away.” Now we’re moving into Phase 2, comparing Nuance, Suki, and Abridge with two groups:
Current Users: Clinicians who used DAX will test other solutions.
New Users: Those new to ambient tech will gauge the learning curve.
I can’t speak to one vendor over another as we haven’t done the analysis yet, but based on early impressions, I think DAX is a solid platform with good user experience. Abridge is also very strong with progress in the nursing documentation. Suki seems ahead in billing integration, though Abridge is strengthening its coding capabilities. Watching the vendor roadmaps in this space is critical, especially for nursing documentation and billing automation. And there are other ambient products out there. They are all moving quickly which creates great promise for enhancing the patient and provider experiences.
How are you approaching revenue cycle improvements?
Historically, in our organization, the revenue cycle has been primarily viewed as just the backend. So, we’re starting with mapping our existing technologies from the front-end, including patient registration and scheduling, through the mid-cycle and backend to identify gaps and redundancies across workflows. We’re also thinking about the right order to stage things in to be able to measure impact at each step.
What’s your perspective on evaluating ROI for AI and digital investments?
We’re working to shift from a micro ROI approach—evaluating each technology individually—to a portfolio view, tracking how digital investments contribute to broader financial and operational goals.
We’re also shifting to value on investment. Not every initiative has a hard-dollar ROI, so we track additional metrics like:
Clinician Satisfaction & Burnout Reduction: Lower cognitive burden and turnover.
Operational Efficiency: Faster documentation, reduced errors, and better coding.
Ecosystem Impact: How a technology strengthens the overall digital strategy, not just its isolated benefit.
Any final insights on AI adoption in healthcare?
The rapid pace of AI innovation makes it tempting to pilot everything. But we’re staying disciplined—defining clear problems first, then selecting solutions, rather than testing for the sake of testing. Balancing innovation with addressing critical priorities is key to long-term success.