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In this episode, Dr. Nele Jessel, Chief Medical Officer at athenahealth, explores the rapid shift in physician sentiment toward AI and why healthcare may finally be reaching a true inflection point in digital transformation. Dr. Jessel explains how decades of EHR-induced administrative burnout initially made clinicians wary of new technology. However, the arrival of ambient note generation changed the game almost overnight, removing immense cognitive load and restoring the intimate, face-to-face physician-patient relationship.

A core theme of the discussion is the critical pivot toward clinician-guided development rather than vendor-driven solutions. Dr. Jessel details how athenahealth uses rapid "pre-alpha" prototyping to tackle the modern challenge of interoperability data-overload, deploying large language models to synthesize complex clinical records into actionable insights at the point of care. While emphasizing that medicine remains an art that requires a human in the loop for diagnostics, she outlines a future where autonomous, agentic AI conquers administrative burdens like prior authorizations. Ultimately, healthcare is reaching a true inflection point, transforming the EHR from a passive data repository into an invisible, intelligent assistant. Take a listen.

This guest appearance was facilitated through conversations initiated at ViVE. 

Dr. Nele Jessel is board certified in Pediatrics and Clinical Informatics and passionate about improving healthcare delivery, as well as patient and population health outcomes through technology. A practicing physician for 20 years, she has extensive experience implementing and optimizing healthcare technology for a wide range of specialties in both small practice and enterprise settings. As Chief Medical Officer at athenahealth, she serves as a clinical expert and advisor across athenahealth’s entire product portfolio and ensures tight alignment between athenahealth’s offerings and clinician needs.

Before joining athenahealth as Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Jessel served as Vice President for Clinical Informatics at Privia – a physician-led, multi-specialty medical group – where she served as Privia's thought leader on clinical informatics and contributed the clinical voice in program design and technology development to improve patient and population health outcomes. Prior to Privia, Nele served as Medical Director, Clinical Informatics at Summit Health, where she led a team of clinical informatics specialists in workflow design, optimization, and training of the EHR and clinical information systems. Overall, it’s through her many years of experience working as a practicing physician that Dr. Jessel has been able to harness her knowledge and fine-tuning of the EHR and morph it into her work of informatics. 

Dr. Jessel received her Medical Degree from the Philipps-Universität Marburg in Germany, completed her pediatric residency at Morristown Medical Center in Morristown, NJ, and attended Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City for a Professional Achievement Certificate in Health Information Technology.