Zoom company partners with Suki to offer AI-powered medical note-taking
- 23/10/2024 10:46 AM
AI medical assistants and scribes have gained significant momentum in recent years, promising to relieve doctors of administrative burdens like note-taking and updating medical records. With startups leading the charge in this space, even established players are starting to invest in AI-driven healthcare tools.
Recently, Zoom partnered with Suki, a leading AI medical scribe provider, to offer AI-assisted note-taking for doctors using its platform. This integration reflects Zoom’s broader ambitions to evolve from a video-conferencing service to a provider of AI workplace solutions. With approximately 36% of all U.S. telehealth visits conducted through Zoom, this partnership has the potential to revolutionize how clinicians manage their documentation during patient consultations. Punit Soni, founder and CEO of Suki, shared that Zoom explored numerous AI medical scribe options before choosing Suki, which recently secured $70 million in Series D funding.
This isn't Zoom's first foray into AI. Eric Yuan, Zoom’s founder and CEO, has made it clear that the company aims to embrace AI tools to drive productivity across industries, especially healthcare. Zoom’s collaboration with Suki is a step toward that goal.
In a similar vein, Amazon-owned One Medical has integrated AI into its platform to streamline clinician workflows. However, rather than partnering with an external AI scribe company, One Medical is leveraging Amazon’s own AI services—AWS HealthScribe and Bedrock. These tools help clinicians manage note-taking and other administrative tasks more efficiently.
AI-driven medical scribes have become crucial for both large healthcare systems and smaller practices. The ability to save time and reduce the workload associated with medical documentation is proving to be a compelling selling point. Companies in the AI medical scribe space, like Abridge, Nabla, and Ambiance Healthcare, are also seeing significant revenue growth as their tools become more widely adopted. Abridge, for example, is reportedly raising $250 million, with a valuation of $2.5 billion.
Microsoft’s Nuance, a long-established player in the voice and speech recognition space, is another critical actor in the growing AI medical scribe market. Nuance’s solutions are widely used, further underscoring the mainstream acceptance of AI tools in healthcare.
Despite the crowded market, investors believe there is enough differentiation among AI medical scribe companies to sustain their growth. Startups like Abridge, for instance, focus on large medical systems, while others tailor their solutions to smaller practices. The concern remains that general-purpose AI models might eventually replace niche startups, but for now, each AI solution continues to address specific needs within the healthcare sector.
