Abridge AI Inc., a Pittsburgh-based startup that uses artificial intelligence to create documentation of medical conversations between doctors and patients, has recruited an Amazon AI research scientist to serve as the company's chief scientific officer.
Zachary Lipton now joins the fast-growing company for a role that will build on his expertise across machine and deep learning methods as well as natural language processing. He'll also be able to call on his work as an assistant professor of machine learning (ML) at Carnegie Mellon University to aid in these efforts.
As part of his duties, Lipton will lead the startup's scientific research and ML efforts while working with Abridge's product and design teams to ensure new ML use cases get built into the startup's services.
But Lipton's new job with the startup is far from his first interaction with the company or its technology.
"Since meeting Zack five years ago, I have always been deeply impressed by his AI research, which pioneered the applications of many modern machine learning techniques to health care data," Dr. Shiv Rao, CEO and co-founder of Abridge, said in a statement. "He has been a long-time advisor and academic collaborator in our work addressing clinical conversations, and I am thrilled to welcome him as our first Chief Scientific Officer at a time when generative AI has the power to drastically improve the provider-patient experience."
Lipton also joins Abridge at a time when generative AI models, like those from OpenAI's ChatGPT and DALL-E products, have become popular following their respective public releases, which have allowed people to use these powerful tools that are capable of creating various works on their own following an initial human input.
"While ChatGPT has recently garnered a new level of mainstream attention, generative [natural language processing] NLP technology has long driven everyday technologies, like modern machine translation systems, and has been used by hospitals for years thanks to innovators like Abridge," Lipton said in a statement. "After years of working with this team on an advisory level, I’m honored to join the company as it sits on the cusp of a breakthrough moment in shaping how health systems will leverage AI to improve health care outcomes and experiences.”
Abridge raised a $12.5 million Series A funding round in August 2022, bringing its total outside funding since its founding in 2018 to $27 million. At the time of its Series A announcement, the company employed 25 people.
Following the recording of conversations made by doctors and their patients, Abridge's tech is able to discern between miscellaneous chit-chat a doctor might have with their patient and more pertinent medical information like known allergens or current medication use. Abridge then organizes this information into categories like medical diagnosis, recommended medication dosage, next steps and other details found in a typical summary used by doctors for their records and that of their patients.
The company hopes its technology, which is primarily being sold to health care providers, will alleviate burnout experienced by medical professionals.
