AI-Native Healthcare: 100M Doctor Visits, 10–20 Hours Saved, Prior Auth in Minutes — Janie Lee & Chai Asawa, Abridge

Abridge functions as a clinical intelligence layer for health systems, automating documentation to reduce clinician burnout and improving patient outcomes through proactive, context-aware AI. The platform leverages ambient technology to capture patient-clinician conversations, transforming raw audio into structured data that informs clinical decision support, billing, and regulatory compliance. By integrating directly with electronic health records, the system provides real-time guidance, such as identifying prior authorization requirements during a visit, which minimizes administrative delays. Success hinges on high-stakes evaluation strategies, including rigorous in-house clinical validation and de-identified data flywheels that refine model accuracy. As the company scales to millions of conversations, the focus shifts toward optimizing infrastructure for efficiency and latency, ultimately aiming to collapse complex, multi-step healthcare workflows into seamless, real-time intelligence that benefits providers, patients, and payers alike.