Ask any of the health-focused VCs to call one of many prime AI startups and one title comes up again and again: an organization  primarily based in Pittsburgh referred to as Abridge. And it’s a startup that launched earlier than OpenAI was a family title and LLMs entered the widespread Valley vocabulary. 

In 2019, Shiv Rao, a training heart specialist, pitched Andy Weissman, common accomplice at Union Sq. Ventures, on a startup concept.  Rao referred to as it SoundCloud plus RapGenius for medication.

Whereas Weissman thought that evaluating a nascent AI-powered medical be aware taking app with music internet hosting  and lyrics transcription was a bit humorous, the idea resonated with him.

Rao defined that medical doctors spend as much as two hours a day—sometimes exterior of standard working hours—typing notes that summarize what was mentioned with their sufferers that day. Such  administrative duties have been inflicting doctor burnout for years, main some to go away the occupation altogether. Rao satisfied Weissman that the newest improvements in AI might dramatically cut back the period of time medical doctors spend on the ever-growing paperwork burden.

This was years earlier than generative AI took the world by storm and captured VCs’ creativeness.

“It was a reasonably wacky concept. Nobody had achieved it earlier than,” Weissman stated.

However Weissman and different USV companions preferred that Rao was not solely a doctor on the College of Pittsburgh Medical Middle but additionally spent half his time as a company enterprise capitalist for that well being system, investing in well being tech startups.  Rao’s workers and advisers had been additionally graduates and professors at Carnegie Mellon, one of many prime establishments within the nation for engineering and AI analysis.  

“[Shiv] had this uncommon mixture of abilities: an entrepreneur with a really formidable imaginative and prescient, with a very attention-grabbing staff,” Weissman stated. “It felt distinctive.”

Abridge additionally had a primary transcription product, which medical doctors might obtain free of charge on their smartphones and begin utilizing throughout their interactions with sufferers. Their utilization fashioned the idea of Abridge’s LLM.

A bit of over 5 years after USV led a $5 million seed spherical into Rao’s startup Abridge, the corporate has turn out to be probably the most talked about and quickly rising AI-powered healthcare companies.

Though most companies are nonetheless very cautious about adopting AI instruments, massive medical methods are desirous to signal contracts with Abridge.

“The gross sales cycle for [health systems] will be 18 to 24 months,” stated Rao. “Once we began the corporate, we knew what we had been in for.”  However with a four-year lead on a digital scribe product educated on hundreds of doctor-patient conversations, and now that AI is booming, hospitals are all of the sudden shopping for Abridge at a fast tempo, a stark distinction to their sometimes protracted buying habits. The corporate has introduced a brand new well being system buyer almost each week for the reason that begin of 2024. 

“We had constructed up all this potential vitality that turned kinetic nearly in a single day in January,” Rao stated. “College of Chicago, Sutter, Yale, Lee Well being, Christus, Emory and the listing goes on and on,” he stated.

Giant hospitals are usually not solely shopping for multi-thousand seat licenses of Abridge however, in lots of instances, publishing glowing critiques about how the well being tech’s software program is altering physicians’ lives. Hospital executives and medical doctors are describing Abridge as “life-changing,” “magical,” and “probably the most vital paradigm shifts inside our careers.”

One of many greatest criticisms of generative AI is that it nonetheless has few substantive enterprise functions. However digital medical be aware taking appears to be a helpful software of the novel expertise.

Drowning in paperwork

“I’ve received skilled PTSD and conflict tales about seeing sufferers after which having to spend hours and hours at evening writing notes and doing all this clerical work that basically distracts from the factor that issues most, which is your affected person, but additionally takes away from your individual private life,” Rao stated.

With Abridge recording within the background, a doctor can focus completely on the affected person with out having to fret about filling out particular fields within the medical document in the course of the go to. 

The payback of AI-powered medical scribes are very simple to measure, says Dr. Lee Schwamm, chief digital well being officer at Yale New Haven Medical System, an Abridge buyer. That’s why so many well being methods are flocking to make use of them, notably Abridge. . “It is without doubt one of the hottest merchandise within the AI area in the intervening time,” he instructed everydayai.

As with many administrative issues in well being tech, on the subject of choosing a vendor, a very powerful consideration is worth and integration with Epic, an EHR utilized by most massive well being methods within the US, Schwamm stated. Abridge, which helps 14 international languages, together with Haitian Creole, Brazilian Portuguese and Punjabi, is commonly the winner when well being methods are doing head-to-head comparisons with different AI-powered medical scribes, Schwamm stated.

Earlier this 12 months, Abridge gained a proper to be built-in inside Epic. After Abridge data a session and a physician stops the recording, “there’s a be aware in English sitting inside Epic ready for them to rapidly confirm, edit and modify it as they see match,” Rao stated. 

Whereas Abridge seems to be forward of its opponents, which, in addition to Microsoft-owned Nuance, embody Ambiance, Nabla and Suki, Schwamm shouldn’t be sure it is going to be in a position to preserve its lead over the long run.

“The massive query is, do you want a devoted medical LLM to achieve success on this area?” he requested. “Or will the enormous basis fashions, GPT-4o, Google and Meta, get so good that they may ingest a complete corpus of medical notes and begin to ship efficiency that’s related?”

That line of inquiry reveals that these are nonetheless early days not only for digital medical be aware taking however for many generative AI firms. The tempo of innovation is quick and livid, and as we speak’s winners might simply lose their edge.

“Abridge is forward by a size, however it’s early within the race,” Schwamm stated, “A horse can get a nasty knee and stumble, or it will possibly maintain getting additional and additional forward.”

For now, most traders everydayai talked to agree that Abridge is main the AI-powered medical scribe competitors. Because of this, cash has been pouring into the corporate.

In February, Abridge raised a $150 million Sequence C led by Lightspeed Ventures at a valuation of $850 million.