Nabla vs NextGen Ambient Assist (2026)
A NextGen practice can run either, because Nabla integrates with NextGen alongside Epic, athenahealth, Oracle Health, Greenway and Arya, so this is a real choice between an independent scribe and the module built into the record. NextGen Ambient Assist is already in the chart and the contract. It listens through the NextGen Mobile app, returns a SOAP note in about thirty seconds, suggests ICD-10 codes, medications and orders for review, and stores neither audio nor transcripts. Nabla brings an independent randomized trial, more than 35 languages, E/M coding suggestions, a published price and a scribe that stays if the practice changes platforms. If the documentation program has to be defended on evidence or span more than one record system, start with Nabla. If the constraint is procurement effort, the module is already there.
- Nabla cut time in notes by 9.5 percent against usual care in a UCLA Health randomized trial published in NEJM AI, the only arm to meet the primary endpoint.
- Nabla publishes its data lifecycle, with audio not stored by default, notes deleted after 14 days unless shortened, backups expiring seven days later, and no training on customer data.
- The scribe is portable. Integrations with Epic, athenahealth, Oracle Health, NextGen, Greenway and Arya mean it stays if the record system changes.
- There is no integration project. Capture runs through the NextGen Mobile app and the note lands directly in the NextGen Enterprise chart pending provider review.
- The design is conservative. Codes, medications and lab or imaging orders are suggested rather than pre filled, and audio and transcripts are never stored.
- One supplier and one contract cover it, with a separate NextGen Office edition for practices under ten providers.
This comparison is published by AI Health Index, an independent research platform that compares healthcare AI vendors objectively. Nabla and NextGen Ambient Assist are each graded against the same capability taxonomy, from each vendor's own public materials and the regulatory record, under the AI Health Index verification standard. No vendor pays for placement, and no vendor has reviewed this page. How this evidence is graded
Plain facts
| Fact | Nabla | NextGen Ambient Assist |
|---|---|---|
| Primary category | Ambient Scribes | Ambient Scribes |
| Founded | 2018 | 1974 |
| Headquarters | Paris, France | Not recorded |
| Website | nabla.com | nextgen.com |
Side by Side
Select any grade to read the note behind it.
Product updates
The latest logged changes from each vendor, newest first, each linked to its source.
Nabla
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EHR / interoperability
Nabla released the first beta of @nabla/connect-sdk, a browser SDK for EHR and partner pages that embed the Nabla Connect encounter frame.
Source -
Product / capability
Nabla's Connect API now accepts Dutch for the Netherlands and for Belgium as speech languages when partners provision providers, a change applied to all earlier API versions.
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Product / capability
Nabla released version 2026-08-25 of its Core API.
Source
Each vendor in one paragraph
Written to be quoted whole. Each paragraph opens the AI Health Index profile of the vendor: what the product is, who buys it and what it does.
Nabla sells an ambient AI assistant that listens to the visit and drafts a structured clinical note, together with dictation and E/M coding suggestions, to health systems, medical groups and individual clinicians. The company reports more than 85,000 clinicians across more than 130 health organizations and more than 20 million patient encounters a year.
Source: AI Health Index, August 2026
NextGen Ambient Assist is the native ambient documentation capability inside NextGen Healthcare's ambulatory EHR, aimed at the independent and specialty practice market NextGen serves. It listens through the NextGen Mobile app, returns a structured SOAP note within about thirty seconds, and places it directly in the patient's NextGen Enterprise chart pending provider review, along with suggested ICD-10 codes, medications and lab or imaging orders.
Source: AI Health Index, August 2026
Questions buyers ask
How do Nabla and NextGen Ambient Assist work with the EHR?
Nabla pulls patient history and visit context from the EHR, exports structured notes into EHR templates, and places vital signs, diagnoses and patient instructions into charts, flowsheets and clinical fields. The systems named are Epic, athenahealth, Oracle Health, NextGen, Greenway and Arya.
The interoperability asset usually attributed to NextGen, the Mirth Connect integration engine supporting HL7v2, FHIR R4 and C-CDA, belongs to the parent platform rather than to this module, and third party scribes hold certified NextGen integrations of their own, so native does not automatically mean deepest here. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified August 4, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
How are Nabla and NextGen Ambient Assist priced and sold?
An individual clinician can sign up online, use the product free for 30 days, and then pay $119 a month, the rate Nabla's help center states. Organizations buying for many clinicians go through Nabla's team, and group rates are quoted on request, with no group price, volume tier or enterprise unit listed.
Activation runs through a NextGen account representative and pricing is negotiated by practice size and contract, so the ambient line item is bundled inside an EHR relationship reported by third parties at roughly $150 to $500 per provider per month for the platform overall. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified August 4, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
How do Nabla and NextGen Ambient Assist handle patient data?
Audio is not stored by default, notes are kept for 14 days from the moment an encounter is created, and a customer can shorten that window, down to a few hours according to Nabla's French compliance page. On expiry the data leaves the application and remains only in backups, which expire seven days later.
NextGen states that conversations become temporary transcripts used only to generate the structured note, and that documentation flows into the Enterprise EHR rather than persisting on the mobile device, which is a purpose limitation and a data location statement rather than a generic assurance. Its named control set also includes patient consent alongside encryption, secure storage, access controls and audit trails. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified August 4, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
Which settings and specialties do Nabla and NextGen Ambient Assist cover?
For Nabla, customers range from individual practices to large health systems, and emergency and inpatient clinicians can document on mobile inside Epic. Nabla supports more than 35 languages, from English, Spanish and French to several Arabic dialects, Hindi, Mandarin and Haitian Creole.
With NextGen Ambient Assist, no inpatient or emergency coverage and no published language coverage. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified August 4, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
Related comparisons
Other published head to head assessments involving these vendors or their closest peers.
The UCLA trial behind Nabla's result ran in outpatient care at a single academic health system, limited to English language visits. NextGen's accuracy figure of over 90 percent is published without a definition, denominator or reference standard, and NextGen publishes no business associate position for the product.
An earlier version of this comparison said Nabla's free tier lacked a business associate agreement, and that NextGen's trust page describes its cloud host's certifications rather than the product's. Nabla's terms make accepting its published agreement a condition of use for any customer subject to HIPAA, and NextGen's trust page states its own annual SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3 audits, a HITRUST CSF letter and TX-RAMP level 2 certification.
The Nabla statement was corrected on 13 September 2026 and the NextGen statement on 10 October 2026. NextGen activates Ambient Assist through an account representative and publishes no price, and Nabla charges $119 a month per clinician.