Ambient clinical documentation, such as Abridge, Microsoft Dragon Copilot and Heidi
Workup Desk vs ambient AI scribes
Comparison last verified November 2, 2026. Facts about ambient AI scribes come from the public sources listed at the end of this page.
The short answer
Ambient AI scribes listen to the visit and draft the clinical note from the conversation. Abridge runs inside Epic workflows and maps any phrase in the note back to the transcript or audio. Microsoft Dragon Copilot combines Dragon Medical One dictation with DAX ambient capture and drafts referral letters and after-visit summaries. Heidi offers a free plan and builds letters from the note, the transcript and context you add.
Workup Desk records nothing. You work from the documents around the visit, such as the referral, previous letters, laboratory and imaging results, ECG reports, medication lists and your own notes. You ask questions of those documents and draft an assessment, referral letter, handover summary or patient summary from them.
The two can sit side by side. A scribe captures what was said in the room, and Workup Desk gathers what the record already says. If your bottleneck is typing during and after the visit, choose a scribe. If it is reading a long referral and many results before you write a considered assessment, try Workup Desk.
Compare them side by side
| ambient AI scribes | Workup Desk | |
|---|---|---|
| Who it is for | Clinicians and health systems. Abridge and Dragon Copilot sell to organizations, and Heidi also offers a free plan to individual clinicians | Doctors who assess patients: primary care physicians, outpatient specialists and hospital doctors, alone or as a team |
| Main input | The live conversation, recorded and transcribed. Heidi also takes typed or pasted context | The patient's documents as PDF, Word, Excel and PNG files, plus notes you type |
| Main output | The visit note, plus referral letters and after-visit summaries in some products | Drafts you edit: a clinical assessment, a referral letter, a discharge or handover summary, a patient summary |
| Checking the draft | Abridge Linked Evidence maps any word or phrase in the note to the transcript or audio | You see which document each answer comes from, and you edit every draft before export |
| EHR connection | Abridge works inside Epic, Dragon Copilot integrates with EHRs, and Heidi offers an EHR integration add-on | None. You upload documents and export to PDF or Word |
| Patient data | Heidi publishes a Business Associate Agreement for US covered entities and says it does not train AI models on PHI. Check each vendor's own terms | We keep data in your organization's account and check the permissions on each workspace on the server. Add identifiable patient data once the data processing agreement for your jurisdiction is in place |
| Price | Abridge and Dragon Copilot through their sales teams. Heidi has a free plan and paid Clinician, Practice and Enterprise plans | One paid plan, with billing through Stripe. Early access is by invitation from the waitlist |
Choose ambient AI scribes if
- Your biggest documentation load is writing up the visit itself
- Your organization runs Epic or another EHR that a scribe integrates with
- You want a free plan to try ambient notes today
Choose Workup Desk if
- Your hard part is reading many documents before you can write the assessment
- You want to ask questions of a patient's letters and results and see which document answers
- You do not want to record visits, or your setting does not allow it
Try it on one patient's documents
Open a workspace, add the referral, letters and results, and draft the assessment from them. Early access is by invitation.
Common questions
Does Workup Desk record visits?
No. Workup Desk has no voice recording or transcription. You add your own visit notes as text, alongside the patient's documents.
Can I use a scribe and a patient workspace together?
Yes. A scribe drafts the note of the visit. You can add that note to the patient's Workup Desk workspace as a source next to the referral and results, then draft the referral letter or handover from all of them.
Do ambient scribes work from documents too?
Some do. Heidi lets you add context that nobody said aloud and builds documents from the note, the transcript and that context. Dragon Copilot answers questions from transcripts, notes and medical references. Both keep the conversation at the center.