Children's Hospital Los Angeles partners with AI assistant Nabla

Nabla and CHLA worked together to tailor the solution for a pediatric hospital setting

Despite the pandemic receding, burnout among physicians is still very high, with half of practicing physicians reporting feeling burned out in 2023. This is particularly bad among pediatricians, a specialty that is seeing a nationwide shortage. 

One cause of the problem is administrative work: for every hour spent with patients, clinicians spend two hours on administrative work. Many have also said that managing the electronic health record (EHR) is their biggest stressor with clinical documentation adding six hours per week of EHR work.

To help cut down on some of this burden for its clinicians, Children's Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) announced on Wednesday that it has partnered with Nabla, the developer of an ambient AI assistant for practitioners.

Nabla's product, Copilot, generates clinical notes in seconds; instead of having to type notes during consultations, clinicians can rely on Nabla Copilot to transcribe the entire encounter and generate an accurate clinical note that is directly integrated into the EHR. This allows providers to be entirely focused on patient care and to save an average of 2 hours per day which are usually spent on documentation. Benefits include reduced cognitive load from clerical burdens, less stress, and feelings of burnout. 

Copilot also automates the generation of patient instructions and referral letters.

Nabla Copilot will be integrated with Cerner, CHLA’s EHR, and it will be rolled out to pediatric specialists after a successful four-week pilot program in which Nabla and CHLA's clinical team worked together to tailor specific capabilities for pediatrics in a hospital setting. 

That included Nabla adapting their note templates specifically for CHLA's pediatric setting, for example clearly mentioning if the patient was accompanied during the encounter and by whom. In addition, Nabla will make it possible for Copilot to capture multiple people's voices in the exam room, including the parent or guardian speaking on behalf of a child patient.

It will also allow practitioners to choose between having patient instructions addressed to the patient's parent or directly to the patient.

CHLA currently performs more than 15,000 surgeries and conducts more than 700,000 patient visits annually. 

"Children's Hospital Los Angeles is committed to fostering a culture of innovation in service of both our patients and team members," Dr. Matthew Keefer, Chief Medical Informatics Officer at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, said in a statement. 

"We are thrilled to be rolling out this new application across our organization that will not only improve the patient-family experience but also serve as a time-saving tool for our clinicians so that they can more efficiently operate at the top of their license."

CHLA is Nabla’s second contract with a health system, after The Permanente Medical Group (TPMG) rolled out Nabla Copilot to 10,000 physicians this past October. Nabla Copilot has also been adopted by provider groups and EHR companies, including the Mankato Clinic, Frontier Care, Opus EHR, and NextGen EHR.

Nabla, which raised a $24 million round of funding in January at a $180 million valuation, has gone from $0 to $3M ARR since the launch of Copilot’s and is projected to hit $15 million ARR by the end of 2024.

(Image source: nabla.com)