Abstract

Background:
Ambient voice technology is being adopted across European healthcare as organisations look for ways to reduce documentation burden and improve clinical workflows. At the same time, the market is young, product maturity varies between suppliers, and procurement approaches differ widely. Clear, experience-based guidance for structuring AVT procurements remains limited.

Methods:
This whitepaper draws on Tandem’s participation in more than 50 major procurement processes across eight European countries, as well as deployments to organisations representing over 300,000 users. We analysed recurring requirements, evaluation models, regulatory frameworks, and implementation approaches observed across these processes.

Results:
Procurement specifications vary significantly in how they define core functionality, particularly transcription accuracy in clinical settings, note quality across specialties, editing capabilities, EHR integration, coding support, and downstream document generation. In several cases, features still in development were weighted alongside live production functionality, increasing delivery risk.

Supplier evaluation methods also differ. Some rely primarily on written confirmation of features, while others conduct structured live demonstrations under realistic clinical conditions. Our experience shows that live testing of transcription accuracy, note quality, and full workflow performance is critical to distinguish between solutions.

Regulatory and safety requirements, including ISO certifications, MDR classification under Rule 11, and European data processing standards, are applied inconsistently across markets. Implementation planning, change management, and ongoing support are frequently underweighted, despite being decisive for clinician adoption. Procurement models that focus heavily on price risk selecting solutions that clinicians do not use in daily practice.

Conclusion:
Effective procurement of ambient voice technology requires precise functional definitions based on proven, live features, structured evaluation under realistic conditions, systematic regulatory validation, and deliberate prioritisation of implementation capacity. In a rapidly evolving market, procurement strategies must balance flexibility with rigor to ensure long-term clinical value.