Shiv Rao
Much of what inspires people to go to medical school or nursing school is the opportunity—the "privilege," as Dr. Shiv Rao sees it—to serve patients while building strong relationships with them. But the reality of the job often means being consumed with paperwork for hours after the last appointment of the day.
That's why Rao, a practicing cardiologist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center with an interest in machine learning, founded Abridge, which uses AI to turn doctors' conversations with patients into billable clinical notes that are integrated directly into health records. The tool works by recording a patient's visit (with their consent), automatically transcribing it, and creating a useful summary. 'Abridge unburdens clinicians from the clerical work that crushes their souls, so they can focus on the person in front of them,' says CEO Rao.
Abridge is now used at more than 100 health systems across the U.S., including Kaiser Permanente, Duke Health, Johns Hopkins Medicine, and UChicago Medicine. Rao expects that growth to continue: In February, the company raised $250 million, which it will funnel into research and development. It also started rolling out a product built for nurses at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona. The same month, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association concluded that 67% of clinicians using Abridge believed their risk of burnout due to paperwork had decreased, and 77% felt the tool improved patient care.
Rao recalls a rural primary care physician who wrote to the company about her experience with the tool. When she sat down to dinner with her family, her young son asked her: 'Mommy, why aren't you working right now?' The woman explained that she was using Abridge, a tool that allowed her to come home early enough for dinner—and that now, she could do so every night. 'Clinicians across the country can get their life back,' Rao says. 'But they can also hopefully deliver more empathetic care because they're more present and building better relationships.'
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