Ask any of the health-focused VCs to call one of many high AI startups and one identify comes up time and again: an organization based mostly in Pittsburgh known as Abridge. And it’s a startup that launched earlier than OpenAI was a family identify and LLMs entered the frequent Valley vocabulary.
In 2019, Shiv Rao, a training heart specialist, pitched Andy Weissman, basic companion at Union Sq. Ventures, on a startup concept. Rao known as it SoundCloud plus RapGenius for medication.
Whereas Weissman thought that evaluating a nascent AI-powered medical observe taking app with music internet hosting and lyrics transcription was somewhat humorous, the idea resonated with him.
Rao defined that docs spend as much as two hours a day—sometimes outdoors 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 depart the career altogether. Rao satisfied Weissman that the newest improvements in AI might dramatically scale back the period of time docs 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 carried out it earlier than,” Weissman mentioned.
However Weissman and different USV companions appreciated that Rao was not solely a doctor on the College of Pittsburgh Medical Heart but in addition spent half his time as a company enterprise capitalist for that well being system, investing in well being tech startups. Rao’s staff and advisers have been additionally graduates and professors at Carnegie Mellon, one of many high establishments within the nation for engineering and AI analysis.
“[Shiv] had this uncommon mixture of abilities: an entrepreneur with a really bold imaginative and prescient, with a very fascinating staff,” Weissman mentioned. “It felt distinctive.”
Abridge additionally had a primary transcription product, which docs might obtain totally free on their smartphones and begin utilizing throughout their interactions with sufferers. Their utilization shaped the premise of Abridge’s LLM.
A bit over 5 years after USV led a $5 million seed spherical into Rao’s startup Abridge, the corporate has change into probably the most talked about and quickly rising AI-powered healthcare companies.
Though most firms are nonetheless very cautious about adopting AI instruments, giant medical methods are desperate to signal contracts with Abridge.
“The gross sales cycle for [health systems] may be 18 to 24 months,” mentioned Rao. “Once we began the corporate, we knew what we have been in for.” However with a four-year lead on a digital scribe product skilled on hundreds of doctor-patient conversations, and now that AI is booming, hospitals are immediately shopping for Abridge at a speedy tempo, a stark distinction to their sometimes protracted buying conduct. The corporate has introduced a brand new well being system buyer practically each week because the begin of 2024.
“We had constructed up all this potential vitality that turned kinetic nearly in a single day in January,” Rao mentioned. “College of Chicago, Sutter, Yale, Lee Well being, Christus, Emory and the record goes on and on,” he mentioned.
Massive hospitals will not be solely shopping for multi-thousand seat licenses of Abridge however, in lots of instances, publishing glowing evaluations about how the well being tech’s software program is altering physicians’ lives. Hospital executives and docs are describing Abridge as “life-changing,” “magical,” and “probably the most vital paradigm shifts inside our careers.”
One of many largest criticisms of generative AI is that it nonetheless has few substantive enterprise functions. However digital medical observe taking appears to be a beneficial software of the novel know-how.
Drowning in paperwork
“I’ve received skilled PTSD and battle 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 in addition takes away from your personal private life,” Rao mentioned.
With Abridge recording within the background, a doctor can focus fully on the affected person with out having to fret about filling out particular fields within the medical file through the go to.
The payback of AI-powered medical scribes are very straightforward 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, significantly Abridge. . “It is likely one of the hottest merchandise within the AI area in the intervening time,” he informed TechCrunch.
As with many administrative issues in well being tech, relating to deciding on a vendor, crucial consideration is value and integration with Epic, an EHR utilized by most giant well being methods within the US, Schwamm mentioned. Abridge, which helps 14 overseas 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 mentioned.
Earlier this yr, Abridge gained a proper to be integrated inside Epic. After Abridge data a session and a health care provider stops the recording, “there’s a observe in English sitting within Epic ready for them to shortly confirm, edit and regulate it as they see match,” Rao mentioned.
Whereas Abridge seems to be forward of its rivals, which, apart from Microsoft-owned Nuance, embody Ambiance, Nabla and Suki, Schwamm isn’t sure will probably be in a position to keep 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 large basis fashions, GPT-4o, Google and Meta, get so good that they might ingest a whole corpus of medical notes and begin to ship efficiency that’s comparable?”
That line of inquiry reveals that these are nonetheless early days not only for digital medical observe taking however for many generative AI firms. The tempo of innovation is quick and livid, and at the moment’s winners might simply lose their edge.
“Abridge is forward by a size, however it’s early within the race,” Schwamm mentioned, “A horse can get a foul knee and stumble, or it may preserve getting additional and additional forward.”
For now, most buyers TechCrunch talked to agree that Abridge is main the AI-powered medical scribe competitors. For that reason, 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.
