Startup Abridge has notched its largest partnership to date as Kaiser Permanente is making the company's AI-powered medical note-taking app available to more than 24,000 doctors across its system.
The integrated nonprofit is rolling out Abridge's technology at 40 hospitals and more than 600 medical offices in eight states and Washington, D.C., the organization announced Wednesday. The health system's clinical staff includes 24,600 physicians and 73,600 nurses.
Kaiser Permanente's venture arm also is one of Abridge's investors. The company, founded in 2018, has raised $212.5 million to date, including a $150 million series C funding round in February.
The health system has worked with Abridge over the past year to implement the AI-based medical documentation technology. Desiree Gandrup-Dupre, senior vice president of care delivery technology services at Kaiser Permanente, said it was the largest implementation to date of ambient listening technology.
"At Kaiser Permanente, we have a long history of successfully deploying proven technologies on a broad scale, as we continue to provide health care and services when, how, and where our patients need it," Gandrup-Dupre said in a statement.
The goal is to help doctors reduce time spent on administrative tasks, allowing them to be more present with patients during medical visits, Kaiser Permanente executives said.
"Our physicians strive to make every interaction with patients matter and work to establish a good rapport with our members so they know they are understood and heard," said Ramin Davidoff, M.D., executive medical director and chair of the board with the Southern California Permanente Medical Group, in a statement. "By reducing administrative tasks, we're making it easier for our physicians to focus on patients and foster an environment where they can provide effective communication and transparency while meeting the individual needs of each patient who comes to them for care. Creating space for the patient and the physician connection is what inspired us to implement this technology. And we hope that those connections and improved efficiencies will help with the sustainability of the practice of medicine for many doctors."
Pittsburgh-based Abridge, one of Fierce Healthcare's Fierce 15 of 2024 honorees, uses AI to increase the speed and accuracy of medical note-taking, leveraging a proprietary data set derived from more than 1.5 million medical encounters. The company's AI converts a patient-clinician conversation into a structured clinical note draft in real time and integrates it seamlessly into the electronic health record system.
Once clinicians review and verify the note, their paperwork is complete. Abridge is available in more than 14 languages and over 50 specialties.
Kaiser Permanente executives said the health system responsibly implemented the tool after testing and conducting quality checks, "with patient privacy and preference in mind."
The tool requires patient consent, and doctors and clinicians will review the clinical notes before entering them into a patient's medical record, the organization said.
"The Abridge technology was implemented after careful review and testing in our market and was very well received by both our patients and our clinicians," said Linda Tolbert, M.D., executive medical director of the Washington Permanente Medical Group.
Abridge worked with Kaiser Permanente physicians and project team members to implement the AI-based clinical documentation in multiple care settings, according to Shiv Rao, M.D., founder and CEO of Abridge.
"We have worked together to test and meet the highest standards of a true enterprise-wide deployment—addressing scale, evaluation, quality control, as well as the complexity of clinical workflows and IT system integrations. We are excited to continue this work with Kaiser Permanente, building a technology platform that doctors and other clinicians can use to streamline their workflows, and ultimately improve the patient experience," Rao said.
Abridge is compliant with state and federal privacy laws, and it processes and encrypts data used by the tool to protect patient privacy.
As the AI-based medical scribe market heats up, Abridge continues to rapidly grow and ink new partnerships with health systems. Its generative-AI-powered platform has been deployed at the University of Vermont Health System, Christus Health, UChicago Medicine, Sutter Health, Yale New Haven Health System, UCI Health, Emory Healthcare, The University of Kansas Health System, UPMC and dozens of other health systems.
Last month, the company unveiled a collaboration with Mayo Clinic and health IT giant Epic to develop a generative AI ambient documentation workflow for nurses. Abridge's new product for nurses integrates into existing Epic inpatient nursing workflows, according to the company.
Nurses at Mayo will help design and test the solution and prioritize the workflows where the AI tool will have the highest impact, according to Rao.
Abridge was founded on the premise that clinician-patient conversations are at the core of all healthcare, Rao said in a previous interview with Fierce Healthcare. His family's own journey through the healthcare system also made him aware of the need for better communication, and he saw an opportunity to use technology to improve the gap between healthcare conversations and what happens next. Motivated by personal and professional experiences, Rao worked together with Florian Metze, Ph.D., and Sandeep Konam to launch Abridge six years ago.
The health system's medical group, Permanente Medical Group, announced last October it was rolling out Nabla's AI-based Copilot tool to 10,000 doctors in Northern California. Permanente Medical Group, which provides care to Kaiser Permanente members and patients, is the largest physician-led medical group in the nation.
TPMG will now being using Abridge's technology. As part of the partnership announced today, Abridge will be the standard AI-based tool for medical documentation across Kaiser Permanente's entire market, the organization said.