San Francisco-based Augmedix has progressed from a Google Glass-based scientific documentation startup to a publicly-traded, AI-enabled ambient automation platform that paperwork affected person encounters and generates medical notes that may be transferred to an EHR.
The corporate, based in 2012, additionally gives pre- and post-visit documentation choices to offer suppliers a extra full digital image of a affected person’s well being journey.
Ian Shakil, founder, director and chief technique officer at Augmedix, spoke with MobiHealthNews to debate the corporate’s evolution and its anticipated launch of a brand new product in 2023.
MobiHealthNews: Are you able to inform me about Augmedix and the way it works within the ambient documentation area?
Ian Shakil: I began the corporate about 10 years in the past with the mission to rehumanize the supplier/affected person interplay. Initially, we have been solely working on Google Glass. What we did is we put know-how on the level of care when suppliers and sufferers are having conversations.
What we do is we ambiently hearken to these natural, chaotic, nonlinear conversations within the examination room. And within the background, we produce EHR notes higher and quicker than what the supplier would do on their very own.
Through the years, the product has advanced fairly a bit. Now, most of our suppliers really use telephones on stands or on lanyards, and yeah, we have come fairly a approach. Lately, we serve 20 enterprise well being programs. Final 12 months, we publicly listed. We’re on the NASDAQ, and we have grown leaps and bounds.
MHN: When you concentrate on how EHRs have been finished beforehand, there have been medical transcriptionists who would assist put the documentation collectively and suppliers would usually dictate. Is the power to have EHR finished in a extra automated trend easing supplier burnout?
Shakil: Truly, I feel it is getting worse. Yeah, there is a little bit of a narrative arc to how type of documentation options have advanced. Initially, medical doctors would do their dictation of their Dictaphone, or these uncommon gadgets, and it will go actually to a human transcriptionist. There’d be a multiday turnaround, and they’d return that be aware verbatim.
What’s completely different about our resolution and others as nicely, we’re voice options. We function on an ambient foundation. In different phrases, we carry out the EHR documentation with structured information proper into no matter EHR the supplier is utilizing from the already occurring dialog. So, when the go to is over, you are finished.
However to form of double click on on one of many belongings you mentioned, we nonetheless do have people within the loop. We name them MDSs, or medical documentation specialists. It is nonetheless crucial that we have now these people that carry out final mile structuring in order that what’s ready within the EMR is simply able to signal.
MHN: It looks as if people could be fairly needed as a result of AI does not perceive all medical terminology at this level. Medical data have to be correct.
Shakil: A hundred percent. If it is not [accurate], then the supplier’s spending extra time backspacing and restructuring, and that finally ends up being extra bother than it is value. And to heck with that, I am going to simply write my very own be aware. So you’ll be able to consider it type of as having Uber after which gravitating in direction of a driverless-car resolution. We’re on the journey there, however we understand it may take numerous mastery of workflows and information, and simply exponential machine studying modeling, to get to that Nirvana place that we’re all going in direction of.
However we have now one other resolution that we’re alpha testing and we name it Augmedix Go, and that may be a pure AI resolution. And a fabric variety of suppliers, we hope subsequent 12 months will really be capable to undertake it with actually good workflows that match our fashions. So, I do suppose, over time, we will see some adoption, however it may take years for widespread use of our pure AI resolution. That is my forecast.
Moreover, [Augmedix is] actually advancing our partnership with Google, and we’re listed on their market. They’re really doing a pleasant job of not solely serving to us with engineering know-how and ASR (computerized speech recognition), however really forging a channel partnership with us and serving to us promote into well being programs. It’s totally fascinating to see the massive tech corporations become involved on this area.
