As a practicing cardiologist, Shiv Rao saw how administrative overload was eroding the human side of medicine. That frustration became the seed for Abridge, the ambient AI startup he founded in 2018 that converts doctor-patient conversations into real-time clinical notes. The $5.3 billion company is now trusted by more than 150 major health systems across the U.S., with measurable reductions in after-hours work and clinician burnout. “As a doctor, nothing was more soul-crushing than working a full day helping patients only to come home and have hours of documentation,” he’s said. “It’s not just about cutting costs. It’s about bringing humanity back to healthcare.”
Unlike many healthtech startups that aim to disrupt entrenched EHR platforms, Abridge chose to integrate with them. Rao describes the company’s partnership with Epic as “rooted in solving problems that matter most to health systems, clinicians and patients.” That focus on meeting clinicians “where they are” has helped Abridge expand quickly across 55 specialties and 28 languages, supporting more than 50 million medical conversations this year alone.
