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Tech Topics In This Article: AI startups, healthcare startups
Like many of his peers in the healthcare community, orthopedic surgeon Sravan Dhulipala found himself spending a lot of his valuable time doing medical documentation. After long days at the hospital, he still spent hours of his nights and weekends typing up patient notes and trying to remember everything they talked about during recent visits.
In 2023, Dhulipala saw just how much the AI and AI-powered landscape was changing…and saw an opportunity to bring new technology into the clinical documentation process. He founded OrthoScribe in 2023 to help orthopedic surgeons like himself streamline their workflow.
Last month, the Atlanta-based startup released its Apple Watch integration, beating out major players in the game like Microsoft.
Medical Documentation on an Apple Watch
OrthoScribe’s Apple Watch medical notetaker, developed by Atlanta-based Hannibal AI, allows for hands-free, distraction-free, on-the-go recording of patient encounters. On top of documentation work, the tool helps with schedule syncing, and automatic AI-powered transcription.
Patients like the new tool because they are not staring at a phone that is recording their medical appointments, Dhulipala told Hypepotamus. From the physicians side, OrthoScribe’s Apple Watch tool allows for healthcare professionals to focus on their patients instead of worrying about their notetaking.
As with any AI startup working in the healthcare space, patient privacy is top of mind for Dhulipala and the OrthoScribe team.
“Everything that we do is encrypted,” he added. “We don’t attach any patient identifiers [to the recorded audio]. We process the actual audio to make a note and then we send it back into the medical record system for that practice. [OrthoScribe doesn’t] do any data retention, so we wipe our whole system clean of any of the patient’s audio notes within a two week period, so it never stays in our system longer than that.”
In its early stages, OrthoScribe is focused on serving healthcare professionals in the orthopedic and pain management spaces. The reason for the speciality focus right now is to make sure that its AI solutions are finely tuned and detailed enough, something that would not be possible if their technology started out focusing on the entire medical market.
On top of Apple Store, OrthoScribe is currently available in the athenahealth marketplace.
Following the Apple Watch release, Dhulipala said the OrthoScribe team is focused on expanding its product features and market reach.
“We’ve done a great job of creating very detailed orthopedic notes,” he added. “The next big hurdle that we’re working on right now is capturing billing…that’s something that can easily be auto populated and done with AI.”