Infoway's National AI Scribe Program Results Are In: Here's What the Data Actually Shows

Canada Health Infoway just published the six-month results of the largest national evaluation of AI scribes in primary care conducted anywhere in the world. More than 12,000 primary care clinicians took part, and the independent evaluation team (the Centre for Digital Health Evaluation (CDHE) at the Women's College Hospital Institute for Health System Solutions and Virtual Care) found that AI scribes measurably reduced administrative burden, lowered cognitive load, and gave clinicians more time back for patients. Empathia was one of the nine vendors pre-qualified for the Program, and the findings give every clinic evaluating an AI scribe a rare thing in this category: real, national-scale evidence instead of vendor marketing.

This isn't a small pilot or a single-clinic case study. It's a structured, mixed-methods evaluation that tracked usage data, three rounds of clinician surveys, semi-structured interviews, and an independent chart review across 11 jurisdictions over nine months. Here's what it found, and what it means for clinics still deciding whether and how to bring an AI scribe into their workflow.

The headline numbers

A few results stand out from the report:

• Nearly 70% of clinicians reported reduced administrative burden, and almost 80% reported lower cognitive load.

• By six months, clinicians reported saving an average of 1.11 hours per week during work hours and almost an hour per week after hours, with gains showing up as early as three months.

• Monthly AI-assisted encounters grew nearly fivefold over the evaluation period, from about 245,000 in June 2025 to over 1.22 million by February 2026.

• An independent chart review found documentation completeness rose modestly post-implementation, with reduced variability in note quality across clinicians.

• More than 90% of clinicians agreed that AI scribes added value to their practice, and over 80% reported being satisfied with performance.

Time saved didn't just disappear into more screen time, either. Clinicians redirected it toward other administrative tasks, same- or next-day appointment availability, and for about a fifth of respondents, a more sustainable work-life balance.

The part worth paying attention to: how clinicians actually used these tools

The most useful part of the report isn't the topline numbers, it's the texture underneath them. Use was highly concentrated: about one-third of clinicians accounted for 85% of all AI-assisted encounters, while many others used the tool more intermittently. The clinicians who got the most value weren't necessarily the ones who adopted first, they were the ones who integrated the tool into a real, repeatable workflow, customized templates to match how they actually document, and stuck with it past the first few weeks of adjustment.

The report also flagged where current-generation AI scribes still fall short: inconsistent EMR integration, gaps in vendor support and onboarding, and a documentation-only feature set that leaves the rest of the visit's downstream work — referrals, inbox triage, forms, patient summaries — for clinicians to handle separately. Clinicians who participated in interviews specifically named referral drafting, inbox management, billing and forms, and patient-facing summaries as the next priorities for this category.

Why this matters for clinics evaluating an AI scribe

If you're a clinic comparing AI scribes today, this report is a useful reality check on two things: what AI scribes can already deliver, and what to ask vendors about before committing.

What's now well-established: time savings, lower cognitive load, and improved documentation completeness are not just vendor claims — they're now backed by a national, independent evaluation across thousands of clinicians and multiple AI scribe products.

What's still worth asking vendors directly: how the tool handles EMR integration in practice (not just in the sales deck), what happens after the visit ends, and whether the product is still a single-purpose scribe or has grown into something that handles intake, referrals, and billing as part of one connected workflow.

That last question is where the category itself is shifting. The evaluation team noted that many AI scribe vendors expanded functionality over the course of the Program, from pure documentation toward what the report calls "clinical copilot" capabilities: information retrieval, referral drafting, and broader workflow support.

Where Empathia fits

Empathia was one of the nine vendors pre-qualified through Infoway's national selection process for the AI Scribe Program, and is built around the exact shift the evaluation points toward next. Rather than stopping at the medical note, Empathia is structured as a clinical copilot covering the full encounter: Smart Summary pulls relevant context from referral letters, labs, and uploaded documents before the visit; Voice AI Intake lets patients complete intake by voice or text in their preferred language; and after the visit, Empathia can draft auxiliary clinical notes — referral letters, consult letters, and after-visit summaries — alongside built-in billing code support. The AI Toolkit (Ask EMMA) extends this further, letting clinicians summarize documents, autofill forms, and pull contextual insights without leaving the workflow.

In other words, several of the gaps the Infoway evaluation flagged as "what's next" for the AI scribe category are areas Empathia has already built into the product, alongside PHIPA- and PIPEDA-compliant data handling for Canadian clinics.

What this means going forward

The Infoway evaluation is careful to note that these results reflect an early generation of AI scribe products, and that benefits are likely to grow as tools mature, integrate more deeply with EMRs, and expand beyond documentation. For clinics still on the fence, the message from this report is clear: AI scribes are no longer an unproven category. The open question now isn't whether they help: it's which tool fits your workflow well enough to be one of the clinicians in that top third getting the most value, rather than one of the clinicians who tried it once and let it sit unused.

FAQ

What did Canada Health Infoway's AI Scribe Program evaluation find?
The national evaluation of more than 12,000 primary care clinicians found that AI scribes reduced administrative burden for nearly 70% of clinicians, lowered cognitive load for almost 80%, and saved an average of 1.11 hours per week during work hours by six months of use.

Was Empathia part of Infoway's AI Scribe Program?
Yes. Empathia was one of nine vendors pre-qualified through Infoway's national selection process for the AI Scribe Program.

Did the evaluation find any downsides to AI scribes?
Yes — the report noted variability in benefit by clinician, inconsistent EMR integration in practice, gaps in vendor support, and the need for clinicians to continue reviewing and editing AI-generated notes for accuracy.

What's next for AI scribes, according to the report?
Clinicians identified referral drafting, inbox management, billing and forms, and patient-facing summaries as the priority areas for the next generation of AI scribe tools — capabilities that go beyond documentation alone toward a broader clinical copilot.

How is Empathia different from a basic AI scribe?
Empathia is built as a clinical copilot covering the full encounter — intake, documentation, referrals, summaries, and billing — rather than stopping at note generation, which is the direction the Infoway evaluation points the category toward next.

Primary sources:

1. Centre for Digital Health Evaluation (CDHE), Women's College Hospital Institute for Health System Solutions and Virtual Care (WIHV). Evaluating Artificial Intelligence (AI) Scribes to Reduce Administrative Burden and Enhance Data Interoperability in Canadian Primary Care. In partnership with Canada Health Infoway. May 28, 2026.

2. Canada Health Infoway. "Canada Health Infoway Releases Results of National AI Scribe Program, Demonstrating Meaningful Benefits for Primary Care Clinicians." Press release, June 23, 2026. https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/canada-health-infoway-releases-results-of-national-ai-scribe-program-demonstrating-meaningful-benefits-for-primary-care-clinicians-862493354.html

3. Canada Health Infoway. "AI Scribe Program." https://www.infoway-inforoute.ca/en/featured-initiatives/ai-scribe-program