AI Scribes Market Map: Q2 Pulse Check

This is part of Elion’s weekly market map series where we break down critical vendor categories and the key players in them. For more, become a member and sign up for our email here.

No healthcare vendor category is hotter right now than AI Scribes. Automated, accurate note-taking and summaries promise clinicians less burn out, more engagement with patients, and ultimately, well, better notes.

Many of the more innovative health systems are actively piloting solutions and some already initiating enterprise-wide rollouts. By the end of the year, we expect most will have placed their bet on which AI scribe to go with.

Here’s a quick snapshot of some of the partnerships to date:

• Abridge deployed with Sutter Health, UPMC, Emory, and University of Kansas Hospital

• Ambience deployed with John Muir Health, Memorial Hermann, and UCSF

• Nabla deployed with TPMG in Northern California and Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles

• Nuance DAX deployed with Stanford, Catholic Health, UNC Health, and WellSpan Health

• Augmedix Go deployed with HCA and US Oncology Network

But the overall vendor landscape is crowded, with each vendor making similar claims about their capabilities. We’ve spoken with many buyers and all of the major vendors to understand the key areas of differentiation and here’s what we’ve heard:

• Note quality, including accuracy, structure, and caliber of the writing.

• Ability to manage complicating factors, such as background noise, multiple speakers, interruptions, and varied accents.

• Workflow details like customized templates, support for multiple visit types and care settings, quality of EHR integration, documentation interface, and requirement for human signoff.

• Technical considerations such as data privacy and security, requisite certifications, and quality of the underlying tech stack plus foundational models.

• Implementation and support related to custom tuning, onboarding and training, and user support

• And, of course, transparent pricing and contract terms.

As scribing capabilities commoditize, we expect vendors will differentiate by adding capabilities or specializing. Some of the larger players have raised mega-rounds in the last three months to become “AI Operating Systems,” entering into new categories like Medical Coding, Clinical Documentation Improvement (CDI), and Clinical Decision Support (CDS). Other vendors are going after different segments with smaller provider groups or specialties like behavioral health and orthopedics.

What do you think the biggest change will be in this space over the next year? What vendors do you believe will rise above the fray and why? We’d love to hear from you (and potentially feature your answer, anonymous or not, in next week’s edition.)

Additional resources for those digging into this space:

• Elion’s AI Scribe Vendor List

• Elion’s 2024 Buyer’s Guide to AI Scribes