The Rise of Ambient Tech in Nursing with Kathleen Maki-Harmon and Jesus Diaz

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Rise of Ambient Tech in Nursing

Podcast: Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Episode: The Rise of Ambient Tech in Nursing with Kathleen Maki-Harmon and Jesus Diaz
Date: October 6, 2025
Host: Lucas Vaz
Guests: Jesus Diaz (Director of Nursing Informatics, Memorial Healthcare System) and Kathleen Harmon (Nursing Informatics & Innovation Advisor, AVA Health)

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Overview

This episode delves into the emergence and impact of “ambient technology” and AI-driven tools in the world of nursing. Host Lucas Vaz is joined by Jesus Diaz and Kathleen Harmon, two industry leaders in nursing informatics, to discuss how AI is changing the way nurses document, deliver, and enhance patient care. The conversation touches on adoption challenges, the necessity of designing AI solutions by and for nurses, the integration of these tools into real-world workflows, and tangible outcomes including improvements in time management, cost reduction, and patient experience.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Backgrounds & Experience

• Jesus Diaz: Brings 17 years of clinical nursing experience and 8 years in nursing informatics, overseeing technology deployment for 17,000+ staff across six hospitals. He champions tech that gives nurses more time at the bedside.

  • “I use my informatics expertise to deliver solutions that helps caregivers harness technology to provide smarter, smoother and higher impact care.” (01:00)

• Kathleen Harmon: With 38 years in nursing and 18 in consulting, Kathleen emphasizes a use-case, outcomes-first approach to tech deployment.

  • “My expertise includes workflow, automation, change management, smart room components including virtual care and AI. ... Technology is a silent enabler of leading practice.” (01:20)

2. Evolution and Barriers to AI Adoption in Nursing

• Adoption Lag: Both speakers agree the nursing profession has been slow to adopt AI, especially compared to physician roles.

  • Jesus Diaz: Notes slow development in governance and trust, and emphasizes the need for products built “for nurses by nurses.” (02:48)

    • “Nurses tend to be a bit skeptical with what I'll call the new shiny objects.” (02:52)
    • Highlights AVA Health’s Assistant as a breakthrough in nurse-centric innovation.

  • Kathleen Harmon: Points out workflows for physicians and nurses are vastly different, and tools often ignore nursing’s specific needs.

    • “AI for nurses must be designed by nurses for nurses.” (03:31)
    • Emphasizes documenting burdens—nurses spend 40% of their day on data entry, which AI can streamline.

3. Essential Features for Ambient Tech

• Integration & Workflow: Both agree that success hinges on seamless, end-to-end workflow integration—especially voice-driven interfaces that feel natural for nurses and don’t add to the “shiny object overload.”

  • Kathleen Harmon: Calls for “undisruptive” workflow prompts—AI should not add more intrusive alerts or noise.

    • “We don't need another ring or Bing, an alarm or an alert. ... An AI solution with workflow prompts built in that are not disruptive ... is so important.” (04:51)
    • Value of voice control: “I can ... play an education video for my patient, or even ask for additional assistance in the room, all hands free...” (05:40)

  • Jesus Diaz: Describes seamless partnership integrations (e.g., Zebra, AVA Health) where nurses can document in real time, cutting down time-consuming, after-the-fact EHR data entry.

    • “There's no fuss, no having to go back into the EHR to validate their interaction ... You do it all right there in real time.” (06:27)

4. Success Metrics & Outcomes

• Clinical & Operational Outcomes:

  • Jesus Diaz: Health systems track outcomes such as:

    • Increased documentation accuracy
    • Decreased overtime costs
    • Greater patient face-time and staff satisfaction
      • “You’re increasing the patient experience by having more face time with the patient.” (07:32)

  • Kathleen Harmon: Shares data from early AVA Assistant adopters:

    • Staff Engagement: Within 48 hours, 20% of all documentation was done via voice. (08:16)
    • Overtime Costs: >50% reduction seen in overtime attributed to documentation.
    • Patient Satisfaction: A nearly 40% rise in patients who “feel like their nurse is present,” with patients noting they like hearing their care discussed aloud.
      • “They feel more included and they feel like the nurse is more present, not having to step away or turn away to document.” (09:20)
    • Quality & Safety: Batch charting drops by 90%, making fresher data available for care decisions.

5. Key Takeaways and the Future

• Co-Design Is Vital: Jesus underscores the need for ongoing nurse input into solution design rather than reusing physician tools.

  • “…Continue to partner with nurses to co design from the ground up, not to repurpose physician tools in order to continue to be successful.” (11:03)

• High-Tech, High-Touch Care: Kathleen highlights the synergy of automation and virtual care, with voice assistants as the innovation foundation.

  • “The foundation of all of that is AI Voice Assistant ... that's going to connect all of our innovation in the future.” (12:05)
  • “I always say it's about time.” (12:30)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Nurses tend to be a bit skeptical with what I'll call the new shiny objects.” — Jesus Diaz (02:52)
• “AI for nurses must be designed by nurses for nurses.” — Kathleen Harmon (03:31)
• “We don't need another ring or Bing, an alarm or an alert. ... Enhance the completeness and accuracy of documentation.” — Kathleen Harmon (04:51)
• “There's no fuss, no having to go back into the EHR ... you do it all right there in real time. That's a huge time saver.” — Jesus Diaz (06:27)
• “Within the first 48 hours of this launch, 20% of all documentation was completed via voice.” — Kathleen Harmon (08:23)
• “A nearly 40% of patients feeling like their nurse is present with them ... because they like to hear us talk about their care.” — Kathleen Harmon (09:16)
• “Batch charting ... decreases by 90%—the information is there for clinical decision support to work effectively.” — Kathleen Harmon (09:45)
• “The foundation of all of that is AI Voice Assistant … that's going to connect all of our innovation in the future.” — Kathleen Harmon (12:08)

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Important Segments & Timestamps

• Guest Introductions

  • Jesus Diaz (01:00)
  • Kathleen Harmon (01:16)

• State of AI in Nursing and Adoption Challenges

  • Jesus Diaz (02:48)
  • Kathleen Harmon (03:31)

• Key Features for Nurse-Centric AI

  • Kathleen Harmon (04:51)
  • Jesus Diaz (06:27)

• Success Measures & Outcomes (Adoption, ROI, Satisfaction)

  • Jesus Diaz (07:32)
  • Kathleen Harmon (08:16)

• Final Thoughts: The Future of Ambient Tech in Nursing

  • Jesus Diaz (11:03)
  • Kathleen Harmon (12:05)

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Conclusion

This episode provides a practical, forward-looking discussion about the transformative potential of ambient AI technologies in nursing. By focusing on nurse-led design, seamless integration into existing workflows, and clear, well-defined outcomes, both guests demonstrate how smart ambient tech offers not only time and cost savings, but most importantly, a deeper, more present nurse-patient relationship. The message is clear: true innovation must empower nurses where it matters most—at the bedside—making their jobs both easier and more meaningful.

Transcript

[A]

Hi everyone, this is Lucas Vaz with Beckers Healthcare. Thanks so much for tuning in to the Beckers Healthcare podcast series. It's fantastic to have you. Today we're going to talk about the rise of ambient tech in nursing. And joining me for today's discussion, fantastic to have him, Jesus Diaz, Director of Nursing Informatics at Memorial Healthcare System and Kathleen Harmon, Nursing Informatics and Innovation advisor at AVA Health. Jesus and Kathleen, thanks so much for being here today.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Could you share a bit about yourself and your work in healthcare, Jesus?

[C]

Thanks for having me. I'm Jesus Diaz, registered nurse who spent the last 17 years in the heart of patient care watching technology revolutionize how we work. I use my informatics expertise to deliver solutions that helps caregivers harness technology to provide smarter, smoother and higher impact care. I'm passionate about tools that makes bedside care smarter while giving nurses more time where it matters most, at the patient's bedside. For the past eight years, I've led nursing informatics and training at Memorial Healthcare System, one of the largest public nonprofit healthcare systems in the country, while supporting 17,000amazing team members across six hospitals here in sunny South Florida. I look forward to our conversation today.

[A]

Awesome. It's so great to have you. Kathleen, over to you.

[B]

Yeah. And I'm Kathleen Harmon. I've been a registered nurse for 38 years, 20 years of clinical experience in the past 18 years consulting as a CNIO on both the product and professional service side of our industry. And I'm the informatics and innovation advisor for AVA and have developed a use case based outcomes first approach to implementing technology to absolutely ensure technology is a silent enabler of leading practice. My expertise includes workflow, automation, change management, smart room components including virtual care and AI. And I'm so excited about this conversation this morning because what I love most is having a care environment that actually assists us by seeing hearing what is happening in the care environment and giving the care team the opportunity to use their voice to interact with all aspects of the care environment. So thanks again for having us this morning.

[A]

Yeah, it's great to have you both again. I love both of your experiences. I think it brings everything together so nicely. It's fantastic to have you both. I want to hop into the conversation here. There's a lot of data on this and it's very interesting. Right. We have nearly half of medical practices report using AI in some capacity. But here's the other thing to this, a significant portion of nurses remain uncomfortable with it. Right. That's. It's very interesting correlation from your Perspective, how has AI evolved for nursing? And why do you think innovation in this space has trailed behind other clinical roles? Jesus, why don't we start with you?

[D]

Sure. You know, I think that our governance surrounding nursing AI documentation has been slow to form and unfortunately slow to trust. You know, nurses tend to be a bit skeptical with what I'll call the new shiny objects. You know, something comes to market and unfortunately, I think the industry as a whole hasn't done a great job initially with building a nursing product for, for nurses by nurses. But I'm happy to see solution like Ava Health's nursing assistant turn the page from this otherwise stagnant approach.

[A]

Kathleen, same for you. I mean your approach too, as sort of an innovator in this space. It's in your title, right? What is your perspective on this?

[E]

Yeah, so like Jesus said, I do believe AI for nurses must be designed by nurses for nurses. Oftentimes technology is rolled out to providers and AI is a great example of this and then expanded to nursing. But the workflows for those two professions are vastly different. Nurses really do need a tool that helps them throughout their entire shift, starting with drastically reducing the 40% of their day and 600 to 800 data points that they type into the record. Instead, they can Simply use conversational AI, similar to ChatGPT to remove that burden. And that's just the beginning because with Ava's connectors integrating with all the systems you typically find in a hospital, nurses now have a universal interface to get things done, saving them precious minutes, reducing burnout, and enabling them to spend more time with their patients.

[A]

Yeah, and you've mentioned something very, very important here, which is the integration piece. It's so important, it's often cited as a critical factor really for AI adoption in healthcare. And I'd love to know what some of the capabilities or features are that are most important in ambient tools right now to really ease nurses administrative burden. That's what we're going for. Right? And really provide that flexibility that you've talked about, Kathleen, in their workflows. Go ahead.

[B]

Yeah, you know, as I mentioned, these workflows are so different. Right. Providers use a more dictation style, conversational way of gathering their assessment data, recording their findings, entering their plan of care, and then making edits and then getting it into the record. Whereas a nurse needs a solution that is real time, easily validated and, and entered into the record without additional steps. But it's also important, as you mentioned, to reduce that administrative burden as well as the cognitive burden for nursing. So An AI solution with workflow prompts built in that are not disruptive. We don't need another ring of Bing, an alarm or an alert. But enhance the completeness and accuracy of documentation is so important. And then further, nurses interact with so many other technologies too. It's not just the record within the smart room. So having the ability to use their voice, as with the AVA assistant, to open a policy and procedure, maybe play an education video for my patient, or even ask for additional assistance in the room, all hands free, without having to use a separate tool is so critical. So I feel like the nurse AI integration piece needs to be an end to end workflow solution.

[A]

Yeah, I love that you mentioned the rings, things and buzzes. Right? We talk about the shiny tools. We don't need another too much. Yeah, we don't need another shiny tool. We need something that actually works. Jesus. I want to come to you on this as well. What are some of those capabilities or features that are, that are most important? What are you seeing in your conversations? Can you share an example of what this looks like in practice for you?

[D]

With the seamless thinking of partners such as Zebra and AVA Health's nurse Assistant integration, nurses can leverage devices to document the care they give to patients effortlessly. There's no fuss, no having to go back into the EHR to validate their interaction at a later date or a later time. You do it all right there in real time. That's a huge time saver. That's the power of partnering with end users and designing tools for us and by us.

[A]

Right.

[D]

So the folks at AVA Health and Zebra really understand the importance of that. And that's really critical in designing tools for nurses by nurses.

[A]

Yeah, we're reducing that shiny object phenomenon, I think, by focusing on that. Jesus, I want to stay with you here. How are health systems thinking about success right now? When deploying ambient AI tools for nurses, what are some of those outcomes? Are there key outcomes, ROI metrics, or even cultural shifts that they're prioritizing? What are you seeing there?

[D]

Yeah, I'll start off and I really want Kathleen to supplement, but you know, I, you know, a few things come to mind. You know, I'm thinking of areas such as clinical outcomes, workflow efficiencies, staff experiences, operational impact. A few things that come to mind are increase documentation accuracy, decrease in overtime costs, because, you know, folks are getting more accurate documentation quicker. They're directly in the EHR right there. In real time, you're increasing the patient experience by having more face time with the patient and I'm sure Kathleen has great examples of that that she can supplement.

[B]

Yeah, thanks Jesus. Yeah, Our early adopters have put in place this strong governance around this initiative and well defined success criteria. So, so focused on the key areas, as Jesus mentioned, for excellence in care delivery, which includes staff engagement, patient satisfaction, the financial roi and of course quality and safety. So we'll just take an example of each. So the staff engagement and adoption. The key focus here is on adoption, right. This is a nursing tool. Let's make sure that we are adopting it and it's truly supporting nursing workflow. It blends with the other part of this question about cultural shifts because a recent outcome from a launch of AVA Assistant has shown immediate high adoption. In fact, within the first 48 hours of this launch, 20% of all documentation was completed via voice. Then the financial roi. A key focus here is, as Jesus mentioned, reducing that incidental overtime. And our early partners have isolated reasons for incidental overtime and really took the segment of that overtime that was related to staying over for documentation and how having the ability to use your voice impacts that. And they have found a decrease of greater than 50% reduction in that overtime cost. Then we'll move over to patient satisfaction, which is the best part. We're focusing on early press gaming results. Nurse related questions specifically have shown an increase of nearly 40% of patients feeling like their nurse is present with them. They've actually verbalized the support of voice enablement because they like to hear us talk about their care. They feel more included and they feel like the nurse is more present, not having to step away or turn away to document. And then lastly, but of course, most importantly is quality and safety. Early metrics here are showing a 90% decrease in time to documentation, removing a significant amount of that batch charting. So the information is there for clinical decision support to work effectively and also the information for their care team members taking care of that same patient, reviewing the record, have up to date data. So it's really exciting. Early metrics around all of those aspects of care delivery.

[A]

Yeah. And at the end of the day, what it does is again, as you've mentioned, it trickles down, which is the most important thing. It comes back to the patient experience. It improves the patient experience, it improves the nursing experience, which is so key for healthcare and an important step. Kathleen and Jesus, thanks so much for being here, both of you. I want to open the floor to you here as well. Is there anything else that we didn't touch on or any final thoughts that you'd love to share? With our audience. Jesus, why don't we start with you?

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

You know, I know that nursing AI documentation just broke onto the scene, you know, but I'd like to say that I think we need to continue to partner with nurses to co design from the ground up, not to repurpose physician tools in order to continue to be successful. As nursing AI documentation matures, I'm most excited for potential gains in areas such as smarter integration into the EHR from devices and more seamless perhaps handoff documentation summaries. And all of these things are going to be adding time back to caregivers while elevating the care that we all provide. So I'm super excited about the future of AI nursing documentation and again partners such as Ava Health and Zebra are making this possible now and well into the future. So thanks again Lucas and Beckers Healthcare and Kathleen for your time today. It's been awesome partnering with you this morning.

[A]

Kathleen, anything else to add?

[B]

No, I would just say I love everything he just said and I feel like the innovation levers of Automate everywhere we can use virtual to complement in person. That high tech, high touch environment and the smart rooms is super exciting. But the foundation of all of that is AI Voice Assistant and that is going to be the thing that's going to connect all of our innovation in the future in a way that truly supports nursing. So like Jesus, I'm very excited about this topic and I always say it's a about time. So thank you again for having us this morning.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. We'll just have to meet again and talk when this is all down a different path. Kathleen, Jesus, thanks again for your time and insights today and we also want to thank our podcast sponsors Ava Health and Zebra. You can tune into more podcasts from Becker's Healthcare by visiting our podcast [e-mail].