Innovaccer, maker of digital tools for providers, has launched an AI assistant that transcribes, analyzes and summarizes conversations between providers and patients.
Dubbed Sara Scribe, the tool is meant for appointments in ambulatory care settings. Integrating with most major EHRs, Sara Scribe prepares encounter notes and provides clinical insights into quality gaps, coding gaps and potential diagnoses for the clinician. The note is generated in real time, the company claims, and can be edited by clinicians before being submitted.
The AI tool features two modalities, one for enterprise and one for individual use. The enterprise version integrates with Innovaccer’s point-of-care product InNote, providing users with ambient documentation and clinical insights drawn from EHR and claims data.
The individual offering is a standalone web-based tool with a mobile app aimed at independent practitioners and small provider groups. The intuitive user interface design enables a user to sign up and start using the tool in a matter of minutes, Innovaccer claims.
The tool is free for the first 200 notes, after which Innovaccer charges $1 for each subsequent note.
Innovaccer is focused as a company on several core areas: value-based care, patient experience and generative AI, Abhinav Shashank, co-founder and CEO, told Fierce Healthcare. Its recent focus is on tackling burnout and launching products focused on productivity.
“Burnout is such a big issue for everyone,” he said. “For us it feels like the right time to be doing something of this nature.”
Sara Scribe has been in beta mode with about 100 doctors. Innovaccer so far has received positive feedback, Shashank said. The more people use it, the better the AI will get, he added. Additional products are currently still being piloted, including ones for care managers, nurses and administrative staff, per Shashank.
The AI tool has two measures of success: the accuracy of transcription and the accuracy of the note converted into EHR-standardized format, known as a SOAP note. Both measures are currently between 90% and 95% accurate right now, Shashank said. Based on initial data from the pilot of Sara Scribe, the tools save about 7 minutes of notetaking time in a 20-minute visit—saving doctors about 30% of their time.
Innovaccer first unveiled an AI assistant, Sara, and other products at HIMSS 2023. That tool generates complex analytic insights about population health data via humanlike responses. It is powered by Innovaccer’s Data Activation Platform, which unifies patient data between disparate EHRs and across care settings to give providers access to the tools they need at the point of care.
Sara comes from the name of Hindu goddess Saraswati, "the goddess of knowledge who brings order out of chaos,” Kanav Hasija, co-founder and Innovaccer's chief product officer, previously told Fierce Healthcare. “Sara makes healthcare data conversational," he said.
A few months after the HIMSS announcement, Innovaccer expanded its offerings with Sara for Healthcare, a package expanding on the AI assistant. It included large language models targeting four different types of roles and aims to cut workloads, automate workflows, generate insights and support decision-making.
Though Innovaccer hit unicorn status in 2021, it faces growing competition from companies like Abridge, Nabla, Suki, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, who all make AI scribes for providers. Last summer, Paris-based startup Nabla launched a Spanish-language AI assistant for practitioners, reporting 10% uptake within a few months. It just picked up $24 million. Meanwhile, last fall, Suki claimed to become the first and only AI voice assistant to support inpatient care.