Data entry is one of the time-consuming chores in the medical field — but thanks to startup DeepScribe, it may soon get much easier.
Tech Crunch reports that the company has landed $30 million in Series A funding, primarily from Nina Achadjian at Index Ventures. Existing investors Stage 2 Capital, 1984 Ventures and Bee Partners, plus newcomers Scale.ai CEO Alex Wang and Figma CEO Dylan Field, are also in the mix.
The funding will go a long way toward supercharging development of DeepScribe’s signature technology: voice AI capable of capturing doctor-patient conversations. The software works by recording conversations, pulling out the necessary data and applying it to the medical establishment’s record system. From there, it’s as easy as the doctor reviewing the collected data for accuracy and signing off. What’s more, the software becomes better over time by learning from the users’ speaking and writing styles.
DeepScribe founders Akilesh Bapu, Matthew Ko, and Kairui Zeng hope the software will enable medical staff to spend more time for patient care and less time on tedious administrative requirements.
“After researching products in the space, we wondered why with over 75% of providers using documentation tools in the space, they were still spending nearly half their day writing notes,” Ko told TechCrunch in an email. “After testing the products, our thesis was that the existing products in the space were not solving the problem, as they still required the physician to summarize the conversation.
According to Tech Crunch, more than 400 doctors are already using DeepScribe, resulting in a half-million conversations processed. The company estimates the program has saved doctors 2.5 million minutes of time already.
DeepScribe is a product inspired by the company founders’ own experiences, according to Forbes. After years of theorizing and experimenting, they’ve landed on a solution that has the potential to make physicians’ lives better.
“I saw [my oncologist father] coming in late at night, missing dinner, missing my childhood activities, and it took a toll on me,” Bapu told Forbes. “I tried finding things that could help him, being the geeky kid I was.”
