Artificial intelligence scribe Heidi is being used in a trial by Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora and has already been adopted by two of New Zealand's largest private healthcare providers. Image / Getty Creative
Heidi Health, which bills itself as Australasia’s fastest-growing artificial intelligence healthcare firm, has raised US$65 million ($110m) in a Series B venture capital round that values it at US$465m.
The start-up makes an artificial intelligence (AI) scribe that automatically takes notes for a GP, using a microphone on a webcam or another device.
News of the raise comes on the heels of a major local pilot. Heidi is one of two AI scribes for doctors currently being trialled by Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora, along with a tool from rival iMedX.
Both are approved by the agency’s National Artificial Intelligence and Algorithm Expert Advisory Group – although an Otago University study (below) found not all GPs are following AI best practices.
Health NZ last month confirmed it had abandoned an in-house effort to develop its own AI scribe, called Tuhi.
Heidi has also been adopted by New Zealand’s largest private primary healthcare provider, Tāmaki Health, which runs more than 50 GP clinics, and a second major provider, ProCare.
ProCare is part of the Health Accelerator, a joint venture formed to accelerate the adoption of AI and other new health tech, which is co-owned by four Primary Health Organisations (PHOs) – Pegasus, Pinnacle, ProCare and the non-profit Tū Ora Compass Health – which collectively run more than 500 general practices, or about half of those in the country.
“New Zealand is, always has been, and always will be, a critical market for us. As an ANZ-founded company, New Zealand is part of our DNA,” Dr Thomas Kelly, the Melbourne-based vascular surgeon who co-founded Heidi in 2019 and is now its chief executive, said.
“We’re proud to be further rolling out technology developed in this region to serve clinicians and patients nationwide. Our AI medical scribe is built for doctors, by doctors. That means safety, security and reliability are non-negotiables, not ‘nice-to-haves’,” Kelly said.
“After gaining strong traction in the private sector, we’re excited to now be piloted in New Zealand’s public health system.
“Healthcare providers in New Zealand are facing many of the same issues that we’re solving for their counterparts globally: an underfunded and overburdened workforce that is being asked to do more with less.
“They, and their patients, deserve better and we believe AI is uniquely positioned to help streamline their administrative burden [and] improve the quality of clinician work and patient care.”
Heidi’s head of legal and regulatory affairs Yassin Omar said: “Health New Zealand’s endorsement validates the meticulous work our team has put into building a solution that meets rigorous privacy and security standards.”
Kelly said his company worked with Auckland’s Hendrix Health to support transcriptions in te reo Māori and other tweaks that “suit the unique and nuanced needs of New Zealand’s clinicians and patients”.
Earlier, Wellington GP and health educator Dr Emily Cavana, who has experimented with AI scribes, told the Herald that the technology would not necessarily save GPs time, due to the necessity of checking transcriptions for errors or hallucinations.
But it did ease doctors’ workloads by giving them a base to work with and allowed them to focus on their patient rather than constantly typing on a keyboard.
An Otago University survey of 197 health practitioners – carried out in February and March last year and released in August this year – said 40% of those surveyed reported using AI scribes to take patient notes.
But of those using an AI scribe, only 66% had read the terms and conditions on the use of the software, and 59% reported seeking patient consent.
Most of those surveyed who used AI scribes found them helpful, or very helpful, with 47% estimating that using them in every consultation could save between 30 minutes and two hours a day. A significant minority, however, said the software did not save time overall because it took so long to edit and correct AI-generated notes, according to the study’s lead researcher, professor Angela Ballantyne.
Heidi launched its first product 18 months ago. Since then, it has “supported 73 million patient consults and now supports over two million consults weekly in 110 languages across 116 countries,” the company said.
Its largest deployment across the Tasman is with Victoria public health provider Monash Health, which serves some 1.6 million patients.
The Series B raise, which takes Heidi’s total funding to US$100m, was led by the New York-based Point72 Private with support from Australasia’s largest venture capital firm, Blackbird, plus US VC Headline and the London-based LocalGlobe.
As Cyber Smart Week kicks off today, Lower Hutt broadcaster Rex Wilderstrom sent Tech Insider a reminder of the August incident that saw a wave of stories on small businesses across Australia and New Zealand who said they had been wrongly banned from Facebook and Instagram.
While Wilderstrom was frustrated at being banned from the social media platform, the incident did see him approach Small Business Minister Chris Penk – which saw the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) set up a new service to advocate for small firms who had their accounts wrongly disabled by Facebook and Instagram owner Meta (you can contact it by emailing small.business@mbie.govt.nz).
“I was contacted by a fellow user of X about the issue of small businesses throughout New Zealand being denied the use of their own social media accounts,” Penk told Tech Insider.
“Clearly, this kind of online presence is hugely important to sole traders, family businesses and other SMEs [small-to-medium enterprises].
“I reached out to Meta to see if I could assist Kiwis to get reconnected, obviously in situations where no genuine risk factors, such as child exploitation, were present.
“We had a good engagement, which included Meta’s representatives explaining the machine learning basis of these account suspensions.
“For now, the fix is that MBIE has set up an email account to which Kiwi small businesses can appeal a suspension. These messages are forwarded to Meta, who assure me that these will be actioned by a real human being.”
Widerstom said: “Exactly what happened, I don’t know. But I suspect faulty AI moderation was involved. Myself and unknown thousands of others – all of whom seemed to operate a small business attached to their personal accounts – were suddenly suspended on the basis that we’d breached ‘community standards on the sexualisation of children’.”
The notification came with an “appeal” button, Widerstrom said.
“When you push that, expecting to get to mount some sort of defence, it merely said ‘appeal sent’ and, less than a minute later, ‘appeal denied, you have no further rights and are now banned’.
“Even my grandkids are large teenagers, so I hadn’t posted anything showing children doing anything, let alone anything lewd. On an account in my own name. Which I’ve had without incident since 2012.
“As well as shutting down my own accounts, they shut down those of a business charity I run, Hutt Radio – it’s a non-profit but relies on ad revenue. That badly affected volunteer morale and our ability to sell ads with no visibility online beyond our website.”
Widerstrom said Meta did not respond to his messages. Thinking he was on his own (in fact, many small business owners were caught in the seemingly flawed crackdown), he approached Penk for help – and his accounts were restored after the MP approached Meta.
A Meta spokeswoman said: “We engaged with Minister Penk and we will be working with MBIE to review appeals.” She had no comment on Widerstrom’s incident or others during August.
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.