The doctor’s notes appear in the Suki app.
AI is increasingly being used in healthcare, not only for decision support, but also to reduce the administrative burden that drives physician burnout. To ease the burden, AI-powered voice solutions like Suki are working to reduce doctors’ documentation workload and improve access to patient information.
Jallel Harrati, Suki’s senior vice president of sales and marketing, compared the Redwood City, California-based company’s flagship app, Suki Assistant, to Apple’s Siri, but it’s aimed at doctors.As Suki seeks to continuously improve the functionality of its digital assistant, the company Announce Last week, it added new voice features.
These “tell me” commands allow clinicians to quickly retrieve patient information, from patients’ vital signs and medications to their allergies and medical and surgical history. Doctors also do not need to access information in the office or in the patient’s EHR. Instead, they can access all content in a secure, HIPAA-compliant manner through an app on their mobile device, the company said.
Suki’s competitors include nuancewhich provides speech recognition tools for clinical documents, and worth taking note ofwhich one $100 million raised Last year to automate administrative tasks.
“We don’t think Suki is superior,” Harrati said.
Instead, Suki tries to differentiate itself from other voice solutions as a uniquely simple add-on that’s affordable ($199 per month per provider license) and intuitive.
“The idea behind Suki Assistant is that it can help clinicians extract information from the EHR, process clinical documents, and do that in a very natural way,” Harrati said. “I think the ease of use of the app is unparalleled in healthcare. Suki is a consumer-grade solution. … It takes 45 minutes or less to get users up and running.”
The app does not require special equipment and offers 24/7 support. The company doesn’t have many people behind the scenes to transcribe doctors’ dictated notes or perform other functions.
“Because we use technology to solve some of these tasks rather than humans in the loop or in the background, we can bring affordable solutions to the market,” Harrati said.
Even so reliant on technology, he insists Product accuracy is strong and will get better over time.
“These are the promises of artificial intelligence and machine learning — the more you use it, the more we understand how you want to use the app and adapt to various traits,” Harrati said.
For example, the technology can better understand terminology, professional language and a person’s accent, he said.
Suki’s ultimate vision is to make healthcare technology assistive and invisible, “so clinicians can do what they love to do — which is to take care of patients,” Harrati said.
Photo: Suki
