The Future Is Ambient: 3 Takeaways from AONL 2026
By G Hatfield
The AONL 2026 conference wrapped up last week after four days of brainstorming, idea sharing, and lovely Chicago weather.
This year, sustainability was front and center as nurse leaders discussed new strategies for building workforce pipelines, staffing for longevity, and incorporating financial literacy into core competencies. The conversations included technology, but as a way to bolster workflows, rather than as a core strategy. One technology in particular shined above the others: ambient listening.
In a breakout session, Karen Mahnke, Laurie Boettcher, Chad Carroll, and Sarah Richmond from Northwestern Medicine presented findings on their ambient listening strategy, and detailed three key areas.
Engaged leaders, engaged nurses
According to Mahnke, Bernthal Family chief nurse executive and VP of operations, it’s important to engage nurses early on and throughout the process of implementing ambient listening technology because it yields better system design, higher usability, and fewer workflow barriers. Nurse involvement also means documentation that realistically works for nurses on a daily basis, and improved patient safety and time spent on care delivery.
Mahnke explained that nurse leaders have a responsibility to actively engage in the implementation process by reviewing key metrics and milestones, and escalating when barriers arrive. CNOs should listen to feedback from their teams and celebrate progress and wins when they occur. They must also lead by example and normalize the adjustment, trial and error, and adoption periods during the implementation process. This will create a safe space for innovation, according to Mahnke.
Designed for clinicians
The industry is no stranger to documentation burnout, which is impacted by staff shortages and high workload burdens. Boettcher explained that the project design for ambient listening at Northwestern Medicine started with identifying the problem, which in their case was time spent on documentation, and then moved towards critically evaluated solutions and pilots that measured desirability and program viability.
They found that the benefits of co-development were invaluable, Boettcher emphasized. Northwestern Medicine was able to partner with over five different health systems to share findings and strategies, and they worked with a key tech company to bring the program to fruition. Since the ambient listening tool was co-developed with nurses and clinicians in mind, the health system saw early and strong clinician involvement and they were able to seize the opportunity to shape the future of nursing.
However, no implementation project is without challenges. According to Boettcher, the health system saw challenges with unprecedented legal and compliance questions, nebulous rollout timelines, product changes based on feedback, and engagement over a long period of implementation. The way to address these uncertainties is through robust change management, which requires leadership engagement and clear, transparent communication.
Optimized workflows
According to Carroll, nurse flowsheets and assessments will benefit greatly from ambient listening technology. Health systems can train nurses to have a natural, flowing conversation with a patient that covers everything they need to learn from an assessment, and the technology will populate the spoken information directly into the EHR. Afterwards, nurses can go in and sign off on the chart and add or fix any missing or inaccurate information.
The ROI opportunities for ambient listening include higher patient engagement, less time spent in the EHR, and decreased latency, Carroll explained. The technology also captures the invisible work that nurses do at the bedside with their patients, which can go towards further defining the value of nursing in healthcare organizations.
To see more coverage from AONL 2026, click here.
G Hatfield is the CNO editor for HealthLeaders.