This Penn resident is behind an AI app aiming to reduce physician burnout

As a second-year emergency medicine resident physician at the University of Pennyslvania’s hospital, Dr. Nikhil Illa regularly stays past his scheduled shift to finish his patient notes. He knows he’s not the only one — and that such practices contribute to physician burnout.

In an effort to reduce time spent writing these notes, Illa founded Pocket Scribe, maker of a cloud-based app that uses artificial intelligence to transcribe and sort dictated notes.

Medical notes consist of the patient’s history, observations from a physical exam, and the physician’s assessment and plan. That last section is the most important part for other physicians’ review, as well as legal documentation and billing documentation, Illa said.

“That saves you a ton of time because you’re really able to just essentially give your stream of consciousness to our phone application,” he told Technical.ly, “and as well as it being a portable solution, you can also do this on the go.”

The company tested its proof of concept a few months ago. Illa said the feedback from that testing saw that it took 70% less time to complete a note using the app versus doing it the traditional way. The company hopes to launch its full product in early January.

The five-person company is spread out all the way to Canada, but the company has an office at the Pennovation Center. Pocket Scribe won the Best Pitch Award at Pennovation’s annual accelerator pitch day this summer.

The company is currently raising a $1.1 million round. That funding will go toward EHR integrations, which would connect the app to electronic health systems, and make sure the app is completely HIPAA compliant. The app hasn’t launched yet because the company is still working to understand the cybersecurity requirements, the founder said.

“Essentially, HIPAA compliance comes down to how secure is your tech solution, but then also, are all the employees in your company — anyone who might be accessing private health information of patients — are they trained in the HIPAA compliance sort of policies?” Illa said. Pocket Scribe is also working with a HIPAA-compliant voice-to-text feature that is trained in medical terminology.

His team plans to offer the tool directly to clinicians via subscription model. Illa said physicians have a stipend to spend on supplies, which would cover the cost of the app subscription. The company also started to work with small clinics and offer the tool to those clinicians.

“It is ultimately built for clinicians … to have an impact on their lives, on their fulfillments of their clinical practice, on their fulfillment of their time they’re able to spend outside of work,” Illa said.

Sarah Huffman is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.