UPMC doctors will soon spend less time typing and more time talking with patients, thanks to AI tech built in Pittsburgh.
The health system plans to roll out local startup Abridge’s AI note-taking platform across its entire network by next year. It’s not the startup’s only deal this week — Abridge also announced it will deploy its tech at one of the largest hospital systems in the Northeast — but it’s a personal one for Abridge CEO and cofounder Shiv Rao, who’s still a practicing UPMC cardiologist.
“UPMC is where I trained and continue to see patients and was one of the first health systems to pilot Abridge.”
Shiv Rao, Abridge CEO and cofounder
“This is a full-circle moment for me,” Rao told Technical.ly. “UPMC is where I trained and continue to see patients and was one of the first health systems to pilot Abridge.”
As part of the pilot, UPMC already uses Abridge’s platform in more than 44 specialties, including oncology, obstetrics and gynecology, cardiology and neurology.
The partnership has been especially impactful in pediatrics, according to Srinivasan Suresh, chief medical information officer at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.
“In pediatrics, we often have to retrofit technology designed for adult patients into our specialized workflows, but this is not the case with Abridge,” Suresh said in a recent release. “We’re already seeing operational benefits with accurate, compliant notes and reduced administrative burden, and we’re excited about what the future holds.”
Backed by UPMC from the start
Founded in 2018, Abridge records clinician-patient conversations and automatically generates clinical notes. The tech aims to fight burnout, giving doctors more time with patients and less time on paperwork.
UPMC backed the idea early. The health system piloted the platform and became an early investor soon after the company launched, following Rao’s tenure as executive vice president of UPMC’s innovation and venture capital arm.
Abridge has grown rapidly since then.
Its AI platform is now used at more than 200 health systems, and Abridge reached a $5.3 billion valuation after raising $300 million earlier this year. Moving forward, the startup is exploring how its tech can do more than just take notes — like using data from clinician-patient conversations to help with billing, insurance approvals and documentation nurses have to do.
“The reason Abridge has scaled so rapidly is because we have clinicians validating the output,” said Chris Carmody, senior vice president and chief technology officer at UPMC, in a recent release. “Abridge provides accurate notes, freeing our clinicians to fully connect with patients in the exam room while saving time charting in the evenings.”
By 2026, 12,000 clinicians across 40 hospitals and 800 outpatient sites worldwide will have access to Abridge’s technology, according to UPMC.
On the heels of a Northeast expansion
Abridge’s UPMC deal follows another expansion with Northwell Health, the largest not-for-profit health system in the Northeast.
Northwell Health announced earlier this week plans to roll out Abridge’s platform across its 28 hospitals. The health system serves more than 3 million patients annually, with 20,000 physicians and 22,000 nurses working across its hospitals and 1,000 outpatient facilities in New York and Connecticut.
Abridge says its technology will assist with over 50 million medical conversations this year and can reduce clinician burnout by up to 67%, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.
“This is a testament to partnership, to progress,” Rao said, “and to Pittsburgh.”
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