Abridge, a generative artificial intelligence clinical documentation company, said on Thursday it raised $30 million in a Series B funding round.
Venture capital firm Spark Capital led the round with support from several health system investors that included the venture arm of Oakland, California-based Kaiser Permanente, Brentwood, Tennessee-based Lifepoint Health and Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic. CVS Health Ventures also participated in the round, along with insurer SCAN Group, the investment arm of the University of California and the American College of Cardiology.
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Abridge’s software uses generative AI to convert a patient-clinician conversation into a structured clinical note draft. Clinicians then review each draft note before inputting it into the electronic health record.
In August, Abridge was the first third-party vendor to get selected by electronic health record company Epic for its Pals program, which allows early-stage companies to work more closely within Epic's platform. At the time, Abridge CEO Dr. Shivdev Rao said the company’s participation in the Pals program amounted to “an Epic stamp of approval" of its product, but Epic distanced itself from that characterization.
Abridge last received $12.5 million in a Series A round in August 2022, which was followed by an extension. The company has raised $62.5 million to date, including this latest investment. Abridge said the new round would fund rollouts of its AI technology at large-scale health systems, as well as product developments. Rao said while clinical notes would be its first target, the company was planning to provide AI solutions in other areas.
“We can start with the note, for sure,” Rao said. “We’re that generative AI partner that can start to assist, augment and automate all of those workflows.”
The clinical documentation space has been buzzing with interest since the chorus of hype around AI began with ChatGPT's public launch in November 2022. Clinical documentation company Nuance, which was acquired by Microsoft in March 2022 for $19.7 billion, announced it was adding OpenAI’s GPT-4 to product offerings in March.