Ambient AI without the noise: Suki’s CEO on closing the gap for overlooked hospitals
As ambient AI continues to make inroads in healthcare, organizations are evaluating technologies and partners more rigorously. Integration is becoming a benchmark, and delivering a seamless clinician experience is now essential to proving what ambient AI can achieve.
“The hunger is real,” said Punit Soni, CEO and founder of Suki. “But we also have to be thoughtful because you might end up building something based on whatever is the need of the minute versus a very thoughtful AI interface that can redefine how things are done.”
Suki’s latest milestone exemplifies that vision. The company is the first to fully integrate ambient clinical documentation directly into MEDITECH’s Expanse EHR, enabling more than 20 enterprise health systems to access a streamlined workflow powered by Suki Assistant. Rather than requiring clinicians to copy and paste or retroactively update notes, the system auto-generates and synchronizes documentation into the correct fields in real time.
“If you are copying and pasting, you’re going to miss something,” Mr. Soni said. “We have basically put hooks into MEDITECH for every single diagnosis, observation or patient history so that all of them show up in the EHR, fully integrated and seamless.”
Democratizing AI access
Concerns over equity and access in healthcare continue to persist and while AI promises sweeping benefits, many worry it could deepen disparities between large, well-resourced systems and smaller or rural organizations.
Mr. Soni emphasized that democratizing access to AI is a core value at Suki. The MEDITECH partnership expands Suki’s reach into a broader range of health systems, particularly those serving smaller or rural communities — where MEDITECH has a strong footprint.
MEDITECH users like St. Mary’s Hospital in Hobart, Ind., welcomed Suki’s integration and experienced immediate results, such as reducing the time to note completion by 50%. Suki’s partnership with Citizens Memorial Hospital in Bolivar, Mo., was also built on its integration with MEDITECH. Dr. Lou Harris, MD, CMIO of Citizens Memorial Hospital, notes that Suki gives him the ability to be more accurate and improve patient care while reducing the cognitive load on his teams.
“The ability to be more specific and really capture what I’d otherwise leave on the table. It’s one step versus five steps,” Dr. Harris said. “At the end of the day, I can physically feel less fatigued. I was a skeptic but just give it a try, I’d be very surprised if it’s not helpful.”
Data from Citizens Memorial showed 80% adoption among clinicians and Net Promoter Scores in the 70s, clear signs that accessibility and usability go hand in hand.
“Adoption rates are important because adoption rates correlate to ROI,” Mr. Soni said. “You can only have a return on investment if people use the product. When you have a product that’s invested in full integration, then you have people in areas who actually get access to AI way faster than they got access to prior waves of technology.”
One reason for Suki’s success in driving adoption is its emphasis on flexibility. The product is platform-agnostic and works across devices — from mobile apps to Chrome extensions and hospital hardware. It also functions in diverse settings including inpatient, outpatient and telehealth environments. Support for 99 languages ensures that clinicians from a wide range of backgrounds can engage with the tool.
The path to ‘invisible’ healthcare tech
Beyond technical adaptability, Suki prioritizes feedback from clinicians to focus on refinement — requests for dictation capabilities alongside ambient documentation and for expanding support to include order entry and revenue cycle tasks.
To be truly ‘invisible’ however, Mr. Soni also stresses the importance of opening up development of platforms to health systems themselves. His hope is that organizations of all sizes eventually build their own versions of AI assistance to truly leverage input from their teams and create fully assistive, integrated systems.
Suki’s recent focus revolves around bringing ambient technology to nurses and home care staff. Here, Mr. Soni’s concentration turns to clinicians’ widely different workflows and the need to prioritize them in product design. The new standalone product Suki Assistant for Nursing reflects a broader shift in Suki’s approach: not just adding features, but creating use-case-specific solutions that truly fit.
“You cannot just put together nursing apps and clinical reasoning and RCM in some haphazard fashion,” Mr. Soni said. “The vision behind Suki is to make healthcare tech assistive and invisible so that clinicians can focus on the human side of their work, which is taking care of patients.”
Quiet progress, lasting impact
Mr. Soni sees Suki’s trajectory as part of a larger evolution. With ambient documentation and dictation now deeply integrated into multiple EHRs, including Epic, Oracle Health and Athenahealth, the focus turns to not just recording data but to make sense of it in real time to support clinicians in care delivery.
While conversations around AI often focus on scale or valuation, Mr. Soni prioritizes collaboration and building an assistive AI layer that is deeply embedded, available across every touchpoint of clinical care, and improves the experience for every stakeholder.
The long-term winners, he suggests, won’t be those who shout the loudest, but those who quietly, persistently and thoughtfully build products that work across real-world healthcare environments. That philosophy guides Suki’s team as they expand their reach and reimagine what AI can do.
“Category leadership means you have happy users, people who go home on time and patients whose data is actually clear, cohesive and democratized,” Mr. Soni said. “If we could do that, then it doesn’t matter whether we are a billion-dollar company or a hundred-billion-dollar company. What matters is you made a difference in healthcare and made it better.”