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Sunoh.ai is an ambient clinical intelligence and AI medical scribe platform developed by healow (an eClinicalWorks company) that passively captures natural clinician–patient conversations and transforms them into structured Electronic Health Record (EHR) progress notes and staged clinical orders. Unlike traditional medical dictation software that requires a physician to dictate explicit formatting commands after an encounter, Sunoh.ai uses multi-speaker automatic speech recognition (ASR) and clinical large language models (LLMs) to draft HPI, ROS, Physical Exam, and SOAP sections alongside discrete laboratory, imaging, medication, and referral orders.
1. What Is Sunoh.ai and How Does It Work in Clinical Practice?
In ambulatory, specialty, dental, behavioral health, and telehealth encounters, Sunoh.ai operates through a four-stage ambient documentation pipeline accessible via mobile apps (iOS, iPadOS, Android) and the web-based Sunoh Studio interface:
- Ambient Audio Capture & Multi-Speaker Diarization: During an in-office or virtual visit, the clinician initiates recording on a smartphone, tablet, or desktop microphone. The ASR engine separates the clinician’s voice from the patient’s and accompanying family members’ voices (speaker diarization), filters non-clinical small talk, and supports multilingual clinical conversations (including English, Spanish, and Portuguese encounters).
- Structured Clinical Note Synthesis (SOAP / HPI / ROS / PE): Rather than outputting a verbatim transcript into the medical chart, the clinical NLP pipeline maps extracted medical concepts into discrete progress-note sections:
- Chief Complaint & History of Present Illness (HPI): Onset, duration, severity, modifying factors, and pertinent positives/negatives.
- Review of Systems (ROS) & Physical Examination (PE): Organ-system findings verbalized during the physical exam.
- Assessment & Plan (A/P): Problem-oriented clinical reasoning mapped to candidate ICD-10-CM diagnosis codes.
- Automated Clinical Order Entry Staging: A distinguishing capability of Sunoh.ai compared to standalone web scribes (such as Freed AI) is its ability to parse spoken treatment plans into discrete, pre-staged order items—including Medication Prescriptions (Rx) with dose/frequency, Laboratory Panels, Diagnostic Imaging Studies, In-Clinic Procedures, and Specialist Referrals / Follow-up Return Visits.
- Clinician-in-the-Loop Verification in Sunoh Studio: Through Sunoh Studio (or directly inside the integrated EHR progress note screen), the clinician inspects the split-screen transcript, edits or regenerates specific SOAP sections, verifies staged orders, and signs the final note into the legal medical record.
2. How Does Sunoh.ai Integrate with eClinicalWorks and Other EHR Systems?
While Sunoh.ai is architected as an EHR-agnostic ambient scribe, its integration depth varies between native eClinicalWorks deployments and third-party EHR connections:
| EHR Environment | Integration Mechanism | Data Elements Synchronized |
|---|---|---|
| eClinicalWorks (eCW V12 / healow) | Native embedded module within the eCW Progress Note, eClinicalMobile, and eClinicalTouch iPad apps | Pulls patient schedule and active problem/medication context; writes HPI, ROS, Vitals, Physical Exam, Assessment, Treatment Plan, and staged Lab/Imaging/Rx orders directly into discrete eCW database fields without copy-paste. |
| Third-Party Ambulatory & Enterprise EHRs (e.g., athenahealth, Epic, Oracle Health / Cerner, NextGen) | HL7 FHIR R4 / proprietary REST APIs, contextual launch, or Sunoh Studio browser workflow | Synchronizes provider appointment schedules (`Appointment` / `Encounter`), patient demographics (`Patient`), structured SOAP note sections (`DocumentReference` / clinical note write-back), and visit coding summaries. |
When evaluating ambient clinical scribes across heterogeneous health systems, informatics teams frequently compare Sunoh.ai’s native eClinicalWorks order-staging pipeline with voice-command and ambient platforms such as Suki AI, Microsoft DAX Copilot, and Abridge.
3. Is Sunoh.ai HIPAA Compliant? Security, BAA, and Clinical Governance
Because ambient AI scribes record and process unredacted Protected Health Information (PHI) during live medical visits, deploying Sunoh.ai requires adherence to the HIPAA-compliant AI medical scribe governance framework under 45 CFR Part 164:
- Business Associate Agreement (BAA): Sunoh.ai / eClinicalWorks executes a formal HIPAA Business Associate Agreement with covered healthcare providers governing permissible uses and disclosures of ePHI.
- Technical Safeguards (45 CFR § 164.312): Audio streams and generated transcripts are protected using TLS encryption in transit and AES-256 encryption at rest, coupled with role-based access control (RBAC), multi-factor authentication (MFA) across Sunoh Studio and mobile apps, and configurable audio retention/deletion policies once the clinical note is locked.
- Patient Informed Consent and Human-in-the-Loop Attestation: Clinical sites must obtain patient consent for ambient recording in accordance with state wiretapping/recording laws (one-party vs. all-party consent jurisdictions) and institutional policies. Because LLM summarization can exhibit extrinsic hallucination (inferring an exam finding that was not verbally stated) or omission, institutional governance mandates that the attending clinician review and attest to every HPI element, physical exam finding, and staged medication/lab order before signing the EHR encounter.
4. Frequently Asked Questions
What is Sunoh.ai?
Sunoh.ai is an AI-powered ambient medical scribe developed in partnership with healow and eClinicalWorks. It listens passively to clinician–patient conversations during in-person or telehealth visits and automatically drafts structured SOAP notes (HPI, ROS, Physical Exam, Assessment, and Plan) while staging laboratory, imaging, prescription, and referral orders for clinician approval.
How does Sunoh.ai work in clinical practice?
During a patient encounter, the provider activates Sunoh.ai on a smartphone, iPad, or desktop browser (Sunoh Studio). The platform performs multi-speaker voice separation and clinical natural language processing to convert the natural dialogue into categorized SOAP note sections and discrete order candidates, which the clinician reviews, edits if needed, and imports into the EHR with one click.
Is Sunoh.ai HIPAA compliant?
Yes, when deployed under an executed Business Associate Agreement (BAA) and configured with organizational access controls. Sunoh.ai encrypts audio and clinical text in transit and at rest, enforces multi-factor authentication, and requires clinician review and sign-off before documentation is committed to the patient’s permanent chart.
How does Sunoh.ai integrate with EHR systems?
Sunoh.ai is natively embedded inside eClinicalWorks (eCW V12, eClinicalMobile, and eClinicalTouch), writing discrete HPI, ROS, Physical Exam, Assessment/Plan, and staged orders directly into the eCW progress note. It also integrates with other major EHR platforms—including athenahealth, Epic, Oracle Health (Cerner), and NextGen—to pull appointment schedules and push completed clinical documentation.
