AI-based voice-software company nets $20 million to ease physician note-taking

Former executives of Google and Salesforce just received $20 million to fund AI-based software that helps physicians with note-taking.

The voice-enabled assistant connects to electronic health records, saving doctors time on administrative tasks like writing notes in patients' charts.

The company, called Suki, is led by Punit Soni, formerly of Google, and Karthik Rajan, formerly of Salesforce. Suki aims to relieve doctors of one of the main burdens they currently bear: documentation in EHRs.

"Our goal is to replace the human scribe in the room. It's a very straightforward use case," said Dr. Nathan Gunn, Suki's chief operating officer. "But the technology has to be amazing. If we get this right, it'll be transformative."

Some physicians spend as much as half their day on administrative and desk work tasks, according to studies.

Suki, formerly called Robin AI, claims to cut the time physicians in pilot programs spend on notes by about 60%.

The company currently has 12 pilots in various medical fields, including internal medicine and orthopedics, in California and Georgia.

About 15 doctors use the tool daily to create several hundred notes every week. The software can also listen to conversations between doctors and patients and create action plans. Voice technology can help improve the accuracy of note-taking, according to the company.

Venrock led this funding round, which the company will use to further develop its natural language processing and machine learning capabilities.

Developers will also work on an iOS version of the software, which today runs only on browsers.

People from across the healthcare industry have touted AI as a game-changer. But the technology has been slow to take off. Health systems are hesitant to sink money into a somewhat untested technology. Meanwhile, developers are trying to get their hands on enough high-quality, clean data to properly train AI systems to do the thinking that makes them intelligent.

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