Reducing physician burnout in oncology through human-in-the-loop AI that assists — never replaces — clinical judgment.
Ella is an AI-powered clinical documentation product built for oncology, where patient histories span years of treatments, labs, scans, and decisions. The project focused on reducing physician documentation time while improving note quality and continuity of care. Ella assists — never replaces — clinical judgment, ensuring efficiency without compromising control.
Oncologists spend hours manually piecing together fragmented patient histories for every visit, leading to burnout, delayed documentation, and reduced time with patients. Existing EHR workflows are not designed for longitudinal cancer care. Research shows physicians spend 48% of their workday on administrative tasks — almost twice the time they spend with patients (26%).
LM-assisted documentation significantly improves efficiency and accuracy across clinical settings. We conducted stakeholder interviews with physicians to identify key pain points and validate our approach before any design work began.
In emergency departments, AI-assisted documentation reduced average documentation time per patient from 18 minutes to 11 minutes while improving the completeness of clinical notes by 23%.
In oncology specifically, specialized LLMs for chemotherapy documentation led to a 45% reduction in documentation errors and improved compliance with treatment protocol requirements.
Our process moved from rapid sketching through structured wireframes to a full brand system — all grounded in clinician feedback at every stage.
We presented Ella to Mayo Clinic physicians and faculty at Arizona State University — walking through our research findings, design decisions, and the rationale behind every interaction pattern.
This project challenged me to design for one of the most complex documentation environments in healthcare. The result was a 30% reduction in charting time and a system that feels assistive — not intrusive. It strengthened my ability to design AI-powered tools that align with real-world clinical workflows, navigate HIPAA constraints, and build trust with professional users who are rightfully skeptical of automation.