Building a fully fleshed out electronic medical record is an entirely different regulatory, compliance, and trust proposition than building am AI scribe.
For all its shock-and-awe LinkedIn PR strategy Heidi sure was schtum on adding a patient tab to its functionality in the last couple of weeks.
From any news perspective it’s theoretically huge: the functionality connected to the tab is pretty simple, but in essence it’s the starting point of information you’d collect at the beginning of developing an EMR.
It’s a very consequential move for a scribe vendor to make, because it’s the difference between a tool that sits on top of the EMR and a thing that could eventually replace the need for one.
It’s kind of a big deal for Heidi to add that patient tab. And say nothing.
Every new AI scribe company is dealing with the problem: stay a documentation layer forever (structurally capped value, you’re a feature that the EMR could someday build for itself), or start capturing and owning structured, query-able clinical history over time.
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EMRs are the ultimate healthcare platform moat.
With AI coding, it’s not going to be hard to rapidly add functionality to that base patient record over time. And iterate with a live base of users.
But building a fully fleshed out EMR is an entirely different regulatory, compliance, and trust proposition than building a scribe.
It means becoming the primary legal record of care (not a tool that assists someone else’s record), taking on liability and clinical-safety obligations at a different order of magnitude, and competing head-on with entrenched incumbents on their actual home turf rather than sniping at their workflow from the side.
We’ve asked Heidi for comment.
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- EXCLUSIVE: Minister promises investigation into Concord Hospital
- ‘Secured’ or ‘devastating’? NDIS Bill passes parliament
- Minister lets go of hopes for consensus on mental health report
- DoHDA redistributes major Health Resourcing Group functions
- RANZCP told to fund own interest forum after review questions value for money