WALTHAM, Mass. — Healthcare artificial intelligence company Suki and Wolters Kluwer Health have launched Ask, a clinical decision support tool that combines patient-specific information with evidence-based medical guidance from UpToDate Expert AI.
The new tool is available through the Suki for Clinicians application across major electronic health record (EHR) platforms, including Epic, Oracle Health, athenahealth and MEDITECH.
Ask allows clinicians to use spoken or typed questions to retrieve patient information, including medications, allergies, vital signs, laboratory results and chronic conditions, without manually searching through electronic medical records.
The integration marks the first product deployment of the Wolters Kluwer UpToDate Expert AI API, which provides clinical guidance based on proprietary medical content developed and maintained by more than 7,600 physician authors, editors and peer reviewers.
Clinicians with UpToDate access can ask complex medical questions and receive responses grounded in UpToDate’s clinical content. Answers include references to supporting evidence, medication and dosing considerations, and supporting clinical resources.
“Clinicians need trusted clinical intelligence from wherever they are in their clinical workflow,” said Yaw Fellin, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Clinical Decision Support and Provider Solutions at Wolters Kluwer Health. “Through this partnership, we’re extending the ability for them to easily access answers from UpToDate Expert AI directly from Ask in Suki for Clinicians without having to leave their workflow.”
The companies said the technology is designed to reduce the time clinicians spend navigating fragmented patient records and switching between applications while evaluating patients, documenting visits and making treatment decisions.
For example, a physician can ask about a patient’s most recent A1C result, current medications or documented allergies. When additional clinical knowledge is needed, the system can provide evidence-based information from UpToDate within the same interface.
“Ambient AI started by helping clinicians document the encounter, but its potential is much larger,” said Abhi Pathak, Chief Product Officer at Suki. “With Ask, clinicians can now interact with the information they need through natural conversation, whether that means understanding what has happened with a particular patient or accessing trusted clinical knowledge from UpToDate.”
Early evaluations found that clinicians preferred responses incorporating patient-specific context 83% of the time compared with responses lacking that information. The preference extended across clinical management, patient safety, diagnosis, screening and medication dosing questions.
According to the companies, the findings suggest that combining patient records with evidence-based clinical intelligence could improve the relevance of AI-generated guidance for healthcare professionals.
The launch also represents an expansion of Suki’s ambient clinical intelligence platform beyond automated medical documentation into clinical reasoning, revenue cycle support and operational workflows.
Ask is now available across the four supported EHR platforms.
