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Doctors have called its medical transcription tech ‘magical’
inquire any of the health - focused VCs to name one of the top AI startups and one name comes up over and over again : a caller ground in Pittsburgh called Abridge . And it ’s a startup that launched before OpenAI was a home name and magnanimous nomenclature models ( LLMs ) entered the common Valley mental lexicon .
In 2019 , Shiv Rao , a practicing cardiologist , pitched Andy Weissman , cosmopolitan partner at Union Square Ventures ( USV ) , on a startup idea . Rao called it SoundCloud plus RapGenius for medical specialty .
While Weissman thought that comparing a nascent AI - powered medical note - taking app with medicine hosting and lyrics transcription was a little humorous , the conception resonate with him .
Rao explained that doctor spend up to two hours a day — typically outside of even lick hour — typing notes that summarise what was discussed with their patients that day . Such administrative tasks have been causing physician burnout for year , lead some to leave the professing altogether . Rao convert Weissman that the latest innovations in AI could dramatically reduce the amount of meter doctors expend on the ever - growing paperwork burden .
This was years before procreative AI accept the earth by storm and captured the imagination of VCs .
“ It was a jolly wacky idea . No one had done it before , ” Weissman said .
But Weissman and other USV partners like that Rao was a physician at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and that he spent half his time as a corporate venture capitalist for that wellness system , investing in wellness tech inauguration . Rao ’s employee and advisers were also graduate and professor at Carnegie Mellon , one of the top institution in the state for engineering science and AI research .
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“ [ Shiv ] had this rare combining of talents : an entrepreneur with a very ambitious vision , with a really interesting team , ” Weissman said . “ It felt unique . ”
Abridge also had a basic arrangement ware , which doctor could download for free on their smartphones and start using during their interactions with patient . Their usage formed the basis of Abridge ’s LLM .
A little over five years after USV top a $ 5 million seed stave into Rao ’s inauguration Abridge , the company has become one of the most talked about and rapidly acquire AI - powered healthcare businesses .
Although most corporations are stillvery conservative about adopting AI tools , large medical organization are eager to sign contracts with Abridge .
“ The sales cycle for [ health systems ] can be 18 to 24 months , ” said Rao . “ When we started the company , we knew what we were in for . ” But with a four - year lead on a virtual scribe product check on grand of doctor - patient conversation , and now that AI is prosperous , hospitals are abruptly buying Abridge at a rapid footstep , a stark contrast to their typically protracted buy behaviour . The society has announced a new health arrangement customer closely every week since the start of 2024 .
“ We had built up all this potential energy that turn kinetic almost overnight in January , ” Rao articulate . “ University of Chicago , Sutter , Yale , Lee Health , Christus , Emory and the list goes on and on , ” he read .
Large hospital are not only buying multi - thousand rump licenses of Abridge but also , in many cases , publish glow reappraisal about how the health technical school ’s software is changing physicians ’ lives . infirmary executives and MD are describing Abridge as “ life - change , ” “ witching , ” and “ one of the most important paradigm shifts within our calling . ”
One of the biggest unfavorable judgment of reproductive AI is that it still has few substantive business applications . But practical medical billet taking seems to be a valuable software of the novel technology .
Drowning in paperwork
“ I ’ve acquire professional PTSD and warfare story about view patients and then sustain to pass 60 minutes and hours at nighttime writing note and doing all this clerical employment that really cark from the thing that weigh most , which is your patient , but also takes aside from your own personal life , ” Rao said .
With Abridge recording in the scope , a Dr. can focus wholly on the patient role without possess to worry about filling out specific fields in the medical phonograph record during the sojourn .
The vengeance of AI - powered medical scrivener is very leisurely to measure , saysDr . Lee Schwamm , chief digital health officer at Yale New Haven Medical System , an Abridge customer . That ’s why so many health systems are flocking to utilize them , especially Abridge . “ It is one of the hottest products in the AI space at the moment , ” he assure TechCrunch .
As with many administrative thing in health technical school , when it come to selecting a vender , the most significant consideration is price and integrating with Epic , an electronic health record organization used by most prominent wellness systems in the U.S. , Schwamm tell . Abridge , which supports 14 alien languages , admit Haitian Creole , Brazilian Portuguese and Punjabi , is often the winner when health systems are doing school principal - to - mind comparability with other AI - power medical scribes , Schwamm sound out .
Earlier this twelvemonth , Abridge gained a rightfield to beintegrated inside Epic . After Abridge records a session and a physician block the recording , “ there is a annotation in English sitting at heart of Epic waiting for them to rapidly swear , edit and adjust it as they see fit , ” Rao said .
While Abridge appear to be ahead of its competition — which , besides Microsoft - have Nuance , includeAmbience Healthcare , NablaandSuki — Schwamm is not certain it will be able to maintain its leash over the long - terminus .
“ The big question is , do you need a dedicated medical LLM to be successful in this place ? ” he asked . “ Or will the giant foundation models , GPT-4o , Google and Meta , get so respectable that they could ingest an full corpus of medical eminence and take off to fork over performance that ’s similar ? ”
That line of research shows that these are still early days not just for virtual medical note take but also for most generative AI companies . The rate of invention is fast and furious , and today ’s winner could easily turn a loss their boundary .
“ Abridge is in advance by a length , but it ’s early in the slipstream , ” Schwamm said , “ A Equus caballus can get a speculative articulatio genus and stumble , or it can keep getting further and further ahead . ”
For now , most investor TechCrunch blab out to hold that Abridge is leading the AI - powered medical scribe competition . For this reason , money has been swarm into the caller .
In February , Abridge raise a $ 150 million Series C led by Lightspeed Ventures at a valuation of $ 850 million .
