Dive Brief:

• Artificial intelligence documentation startup Suki has launched a dictation tool that transcribes speech into text word-for-word, the company announced Tuesday.
• The company’s flagship product is a scribe that listens passively in doctors’ offices and turns patient-provider conversations into summarized clinical notes, rather than a transcript. But the new tool captures spoken word verbatim, which can be useful for providers working with complicated medical jargon, Suki said in a press release.
• The tool can be integrated into Epic and Meditech’s electronic health records systems. Health tech companies can also embed it directly into their own products, eliminating the need to build tools from scratch, according to Suki.

Dive Insight:

Suki says its new AI-powered dictation tool, which providers can deploy on its own or alongside Suki’s ambient clinical documentation tool, allows clinicians to choose the most appropriate documentation method for each patient visit.

The tool uses automatic speech recognition, a branch of AI that actively learns a user’s vocabulary over time and removes filler words to make the notes more concise.

Providers might choose the verbatim tool, Suki Dictation, when documenting complex surgical procedures or medical codes to ensure the highest level of precision, which is critical for accurate reimbursements, the company said.

Meanwhile, a doctor having a more routine conversation with a patient might prefer an ambient listening tool that generates notes during the appointment and summarizes key talking points.

Clinical dictation has progressed from in-person stenographers to today’s AI-assisted tools embedded into EHR systems. Transcribing speech to text is not new technology, but Suki says leveraging AI to do it provides more value for clinicians.

According to Abhi Pathak, Suki’s chief product officer, the company’s dictation tool shares a base infrastructure with its ambient documentation product, laying the groundwork for future products such as AI-backed procedure note generation, conversational voice editing and intelligent voice commands. Clinical documentation is one of the most popular use cases for AI in healthcare. Research shows that among hospitals using Epic’s EHR, 63% use AI for documentation. AI scribes have been tied to time savings and an uptick in clinician job satisfaction.

Suki is competing in a fierce market dominated by well-funded startups and EHR companies offering their own native AI scribes. Suki’s dictation tool comes more than a year after one of its competitors, health tech startup Nabla, launched a dictation tool. Microsoft Dragon Copilot also offers dictation alongside ambient documentation.