Dr. Tom Kelly is a trauma surgeon who observes doctors overwhelmed by administrative tasks. He sought to create a solution, leading to the development of an AI care partner. This tool is designed to work alongside clinicians, handling administrative duties so that providers can focus on delivering the care they are passionate about.
Dr. Kelly partnered with Waleed Mussa, a former colleague from a previous startup, and together they founded Heidi Health in 2021. The company started launching its products in early 2024. In just eighteen months, Heidi Health has reportedly returned over eighteen million hours to frontline healthcare providers from more than seventy million patient visits across one hundred and sixteen countries.
The product is an AI medical scribe that manages administrative work for doctors. It can transcribe and dictate notes, create personalized patient summaries, and track tasks, eliminating the need for tools like sticky notes. Heidi Health utilizes both its own proprietary AI model and other existing models, such as Gemini. This model agnostic approach allows the company to optimize for accuracy, latency, and cost.
The company recently announced a sixty-five million dollar Series B funding round led by Steve Cohen’s Point72. Alongside this funding, Heidi Health introduced a new AI agent that can call patients on behalf of a doctor. The company also welcomed Dr. Simon Kos, the former Chief Medical Officer at Microsoft, and Paul Williamson, Plaid’s head of revenue, to its team.
To date, Heidi Health has raised a total of ninety-six point six million dollars. Other participants in the recent funding round include Goodwater Capital, Headline, Blackbird VC, LG Technology Ventures, and Alumni Ventures. Dr. Kelly stated that Point72 was impressed by Heidi’s product adoption and user metrics, as well as the company’s focus on the end user experience, which they felt distinguished it from competitors who primarily rely on top-down sales strategies.
The new capital will support product development. Dr. Kelly aims to expand clinician capabilities and remove the drudgery from their work by providing greater access to AI tools. He noted that current medical conversations are often centered on developed nations, but he envisions a world where any healthcare provider can use Heidi to increase their clinical capacity. This could include practicing in war zones, refugee camps, regions affected by climate change, or simply underserved communities, ultimately helping them reach more patients and deliver better health outcomes.
The health tech sector is being transformed by AI, with other companies in the medical scribe space including DeepScribe, Ambiance Healthcare, and Abridge. Heidi Health reports that it works with over two million clinicians each week, from large hospitals to individual practices. The company offers a free version of its product with paid features, which Dr. Kelly believes effectively attracts new customers.
He acknowledges that AI will undoubtedly change everything in healthcare, but he emphasizes that humanity remains essential, particularly for building and maintaining trust. The true promise of AI, according to Dr. Kelly, is to double the world’s health care capacity, and that is the goal his company is striving to achieve.