BOSTON, Mass. — athenahealth will integrate Microsoft’s Dragon Copilot technology into its athenaOne electronic health record system starting in the first half of 2026, giving ambulatory clinicians another option for generating clinical notes through ambient listening.
The addition makes Microsoft Dragon Copilot the newest model available within Ambient Notes, athenahealth’s AI-based tool that captures clinical conversations and produces draft documentation. athenahealth said the feature will be embedded directly into athenaOne, allowing clinicians to choose the ambient model that fits their workflow. According to the company, athenaOne is currently the only EHR that lets individual clinicians select among different ambient tools under a single contract.
“Ambient technology is transforming how care is documented and delivered, freeing clinicians to focus more on their patients. At athenahealth, we champion an open ecosystem – easy, flexible and choice-driven,” said Paul Brient, chief product and operations officer for athenahealth. “We are excited to collaborate with Microsoft Dragon Copilot to bring our customers a powerful new option.”
Once integrated, Dragon Copilot will function as part of the existing Ambient Notes toolset. Clinicians will be able to activate ambient listening during office visits and receive AI-generated draft notes within seconds, which they can review and edit before finalizing.
Kenneth Harper, general manager for Dragon Product Management at Microsoft Health and Life Sciences, said the expansion builds on ongoing work between the two companies. “At Microsoft, we’ve long been committed to empowering clinicians with our Dragon technology that simplifies their workflows and restores time for patient care,” he said. “Building on our long-term strategic collaboration with athenahealth, we are now bringing Microsoft’s Dragon ambient technology, which is already in use at over 650 healthcare organizations, to athenahealth’s customers so that their clinicians can fully concentrate on delivering exceptional patient care while significantly reducing the administrative burden of clinical documentation.”
athenahealth said its Ambient Notes tool is already in use across the athenaOne network, which includes more than 170,000 clinicians and nearly 50 specialties.
