What Does Your AI Scribe Save? Audio, Drafts, and Questions.

If you ever have to answer questions about a case, those questions may extend well beyond the note in the chart. Discovery could reach the audio, transcript, first draft, edits, and questions you asked the AI that night.

palmER never stores ambient audio. Transcripts, drafts, edits, and clinical questions are automatically deleted within 24 hours, and your patient data is never used to train AI models. Get the MDM, consult preparation, chart review, and discharge help you need without a permanent patient-data archive in your AI workspace.

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The Record Behind the Record

Ambient documentation and clinical assistants can retain more than the note you sign:

• The audio recording of the entire bedside conversation, including small talk, background noise, and comments made by family members in the corner of the room.
• The verbatim transcript, complete with speech recognition errors. If you proofread and corrected the text, both versions can remain stored.
• The AI draft notes, capturing initial generations before any clinician edits.
• Prompts, inputs, and clinical questions: typed instructions, corrections, and queries entered into built-in assistants.
• Secondary processing data retained to debug system performance or refine models.

These artifacts may sit outside the chart you sign and create a second record of the encounter.

What other tools keep

Here’s what we found:

• Microsoft Dragon Copilot (formerly DAX Copilot): Microsoft's own documentation states that Dragon Copilot "retains audio, recognized text, transcript, and flowsheet value data for up to 90 days." Its privacy white paper adds that select customer data, audio and transcripts included, is copied to a research environment and anonymized for ongoing model training. For the legacy DAX Copilot product, Microsoft's FAQ states that summaries and transcripts are accessible for 30 days and then "automatically deleted from both the desktop and mobile app," that recordings "are stored on Microsoft Azure Servers" with no stated deletion timeline for those server copies, and that a clinician cannot delete a summary, only archive it. And it isn't just audio: Microsoft's data collection white paper lists "all versions of edited AI drafts," your corrections, and the final signed documentation as required service data.
• Abridge: Abridge's privacy policy publishes no retention number. CPCMG tells patients audio and transcripts are deleted after 30 days; UC Davis Health says all recordings are deleted after 30 days; UChicago Medicine says recordings never last more than a week. In litigation filed against Sharp HealthCare in early 2026, a patient who asked for his recording to be deleted was reportedly told that Abridge retains data for 30 days and the recording could not be promptly removed. How long draft notes and your edits persist is not published anywhere. Abridge also says its newest foundation model will be trained with de-identified data.
• Commure: Commure's own compliance guide states that for Commure Scribe, audio recordings are "stored and encrypted," that "default retention is one year active, after which recordings are archived," and that "the minimum archive period is six years." Transcripts and notes persist until you delete them. Its privacy policy keeps account data "up to six years after the account is closed." Anonymized data is kept indefinitely. For hospital deployments, the trust center of Athelas, a Commure company, says data is "retained according to documented schedules and customer contracts." Those retention terms depend on the hospital's agreement.
• Suki: Suki's security FAQ states that the original audio recording is deleted after 30 days, but the final clinical note "is retained for the duration of your service contract," and its privacy policy keeps an open-ended clause that can extend past the relationship. De-identified data is used for model training.
• Nabla: Nabla's trust center states "By default, we don't store audio" and that clinical notes are retained for 14 days, configurable per client. Its terms still reserve the right to "freely use any patient information" once it has been fully de-identified.
• Your hospital's specific setup: retention is set by the contract between the health system and the vendor, and often by hospital policy on top of it, so the same product can behave differently at different hospitals.

The Deposition Problem and Legal Exposure

Retained data may become discoverable in malpractice litigation and privacy actions. Major medical malpractice carriers and legal experts highlight significant liabilities tied to ambient technology:

• ProAssurance says retained audio may be discoverable in litigation and warns that inconsistencies between audio and notes can undermine the reliability of the record.
• Health-law firms warn about a dual-record problem: underlying audio and transcripts may be used to argue that a produced medical record is incomplete, or to raise spoliation questions when data was deleted under routine schedules. See McAfee & Taft.
• MICA emphasizes that clinicians must catch and correct AI errors before signing, and that recordings may need to be preserved under a regulatory mandate or litigation hold.
• The American Bar Association's health law group advises counsel to account for new data flows and storage points when assessing AI documentation.

Questions to the built-in assistant can persist too

Many EMR-integrated platforms include an AI-powered medical reference. The questions you ask it can be saved too.

Microsoft's transparency documentation for Dragon Copilot says the system ingests "typed or pasted text, and natural-language prompts," counts "clinician inputs" among the customer data it processes, and offers an Information Assist feature whose own example queries include "What antibiotics are recommended for a diagnosis of Community-Acquired Pneumonia?" and "Can metformin be crushed and administered via feeding tube?" Microsoft says "the extension and relevant prompts are being continuously evaluated for enhancement and optimization." What none of its Dragon Copilot documentation publishes is a retention period for those questions. The 90-day statement covers audio, recognized text, transcripts, and flowsheet data.

Abridge invites you to "ask clinical questions in context" using the patient's chart, and offers CME credit for point-of-care questions, which raises a separate question about what question or activity records are tied to your account. Abridge does not publish how long it retains clinicians' questions. Suki markets its assistant for asking questions about the chart, and its only published retention schedule covers ambient sessions.

Double-checking a dose or guideline is common. In the AMA's 2026 survey, 81% of physicians report using AI in practice, and in one academic hospitalist study answering clinical questions was the most common use.

The concern is that these questions can form a timestamped, verbatim record tied to a patient encounter and held by a third party. EMR audit trails have made this concern familiar: "every keystroke leaves an electronic footprint," as one malpractice carrier puts it, and audit trails are routinely requested and produced in malpractice litigation. ProAssurance's guidance on AI and privilege says clinician research on AI platforms is not privileged and searches themselves "may be discoverable through written discovery or deposition." It also reports that defense counsel advise clinicians to stop researching on any platform when litigation is possible.

In the New York Times' copyright litigation against OpenAI, a federal court ordered OpenAI to preserve ChatGPT logs, including chats users had asked to delete, and later ordered 20 million de-identified conversations produced to the plaintiffs. The case illustrates why retention and deletion terms matter.

Consider this deposition question: "Doctor, at 2:41 a.m. you asked the AI how to dose this medication. Do you routinely need help with that?"

How palmER Handles Data Differently

palmER was built by emergency medicine physicians for acute care workflows and limits the data retained after an encounter:

• Audio is not stored. It is transcribed and then discarded.
• palmER automatically deletes patient data within 24 hours. Transcripts, inputs, chats, drafts, and assistant questions are included in that deletion window.
• No model training. Data entered into palmER is not used to train AI models, and palmER takes no license to use customer content for any other purpose.

palmER's outside AI providers are also contractually barred from retaining your data.

For the implementation behind the audio policy, read about palmER's open-source transcription stack. It explains what the published code lets you inspect about audio handling.

Five Questions to Ask Your AI Vendor

Before relying on a third-party AI scribe, ask the vendor or your IT department these questions:

1. How long is encounter audio kept, and in what storage location? Ask for exact day counts and storage locations rather than vague assurances.
2. What secondary artifacts are retained? Demand a full list covering transcripts, drafts, edit history, prompts, and assistant questions.
3. Who can access the data, and how does a litigation hold apply? Ask whether stored data can be produced for litigation and how a legal hold affects routine deletion.
4. Can data be promptly deleted upon request? Ask how quickly a deletion request can be honored and what could prevent it.
5. Is any data used for model training? Clarify whether de-identified data can be used under the vendor terms.

For the broader buying decision, our emergency medicine AI scribe comparison guide covers MDM documentation, shift tools, pricing, and access alongside retention.

The palmER vs Freed, palmER vs Heidi, and palmER vs Doximity Scribe comparisons take a closer look at each product's retention and AI-training terms.

Help for the whole shift. A deadline for patient data.

palmER puts EM-native MDM writing, clinical answers, consult preparation, chart review, and discharge documents in one workspace. It also spots documentation needs for critical care, procedures, and sepsis and drafts the supporting notes. Paste the chart, and palmER builds the MDM with the clinical reasoning included.

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This article discusses publicly documented vendor policies and general commentary with vendor information reviewed September 2026. Retention behavior varies by institution and contract, and policies change. It is not legal advice; for questions about your exposure, talk to your risk management team or an attorney.