The #1 Thing Doctors Want AI to Fix (It’s Not What You Think)

When AI in healthcare is discussed, the spotlight usually falls on clinical breakthroughs—earlier diagnoses, predictive analytics, and algorithm-assisted decision-making. From the outside, it looks like doctors are eager for AI to help them make better medical decisions.

The data tells a very different story.

According to the 2025 Physicians AI Report, the single most important thing physicians want from AI has nothing to do with diagnostics or clinical reasoning. Instead, 65% of physicians say their top priority is eliminating manual documentation and scribing altogether.

This finding reframes the entire AI conversation in healthcare. The biggest problem doctors want AI to solve isn’t medical uncertainty, it’s administrative overload. And nowhere is that overload felt more acutely than in clinical documentation.

The Documentation Crisis Hiding in Plain Sight

Documentation has quietly become one of the most time-consuming parts of practicing medicine.

Physicians today spend hours each day typing notes, clicking through EHR fields, responding to inbox messages, and completing compliance-driven paperwork. Much of this work happens after clinic hours, contributing to burnout, dissatisfaction, and reduced time with patients.

The survey data makes this painfully clear:

• 65% want AI to eliminate documentation and scribing
• 48% want help reducing administrative burden
• Only 43% prioritize clinical decision support

In other words, doctors aren’t asking AI to help them think—they’re asking it to help them keep up.

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This explains why some of the fastest-adopted AI tools in medicine aren’t diagnostic engines, but ambient scribes.

Why Administrative Burden Not Medicine, Is The Real Bottleneck

From a physician’s perspective, clinical decision-making is rarely the limiting factor in patient care. Training, experience, and guidelines already provide strong support.

What is limiting care is everything wrapped around medicine:

• Writing and rewriting notes
• Duplicating information across systems
• Translating conversations into structured data
• Meeting documentation requirements that serve billing and compliance, not patients

The report also highlights widespread frustration with institutional AI adoption. 81% of physicians express dissatisfaction with how their employers are implementing AI, pushing many to adopt tools on their own.

When physicians are free to choose, they overwhelmingly choose tools that reduce clerical work first.

Enter Ambient Scribing: Where AI Adoption is Accelerating Fastest

Ambient documentation tools aim to solve the documentation problem at its source. Instead of asking physicians to document after the visit, or type during it, these tools capture clinical conversations and convert them into structured notes.

Several scribing platforms stand out in the survey and broader physician demand.

Abridge: The Most Requested Documentation Tool

Abridge ranks among the most used AI tools in the report and is also the most requested tool physicians want access to (22.2%), signaling strong unmet demand.

Physicians are drawn to Abridge because it:

• Captures patient-clinician conversations naturally
• Produces structured clinical notes
• Reduces the need for after-hours charting

Abridge’s popularity reflects a broader truth: doctors don’t want better templates—they want less typing.

DAX Copilot: Ambient Documentation At Enterprise Scale

DAX Copilot, Microsoft’s ambient clinical documentation tool, appeals to physicians working in larger organizations where integration and compliance matter.

Its core value lies in passive documentation, listening during encounters and generating notes without disrupting workflow. For clinicians already embedded in enterprise ecosystems, this kind of AI offers documentation relief without introducing yet another system to manage.

Its presence among the top-used tools reinforces how universal the documentation problem has become.

Heidi: Speed and Simplicity for Smaller Practices

While enterprise tools dominate headlines, Heidi highlights a different segment of the market: solo and small-group practices.

Physicians using Heidi value:

• Fast note turnaround
• Minimal setup complexity
• Practical time savings without heavy IT involvement

Its adoption shows that documentation pain isn’t limited to large systems, smaller practices often feel it even more acutely.

Freed: Meeting Physicians Where Burnout Is Highest

Although not ranked among the top 10 by usage percentage, Freed is frequently mentioned in discussions around physician burnout and documentation fatigue.

Freed positions itself squarely around the emotional and cognitive cost of charting—focusing on ease of use and rapid relief rather than deep enterprise integration. Its growing visibility aligns with survey findings that many physicians are independently seeking documentation solutions outside formal channels.

Why Documentation Tools Beat “Smarter” Clinical AI

The survey data exposes a critical disconnect.

Healthcare organizations and vendors often emphasize advanced clinical AI, predictive models, risk scoring, diagnostic support. Meanwhile, physicians are asking for help with the least glamorous part of their job.

This gap explains why:

• General AI tools are widely adopted for admin tasks
• Documentation tools punch above their weight in demand
• Clinical decision support tools, while valuable, are not the top priority

AI adoption in medicine isn’t failing, it’s simply happening from the bottom up, driven by everyday pain points rather than strategic roadmaps.

What This Means For The Future Of AI In Healthcare

The takeaway from the data is unmistakable:

If AI can’t reduce documentation burden, physicians won’t care how advanced it is.

Doctors are not resistant to AI. They are resistant to more work. Tools that eliminate manual documentation restore time, attention, and energy—three things modern medicine desperately lacks.

Organizations that want meaningful AI adoption should start where physicians already are:

• Charting late at night
• Clicking through endless forms
• Spending more time documenting care than delivering it

Solve that problem first, and everything else follows.

Find out what physicians think about AI. Download the 2025 AI Physicians Report.