Yesterday, 75,000 employees at healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente initiated a three-day strike, marking the largest healthcare strike in U.S. history. The workers are protesting against understaffing, burnout, and low wages. While negotiations are underway between Kaiser and union representatives, the company’s physician division has partnered with Nabla, an AI healthcare startup from Paris, to introduce an AI assistant for doctors and clinicians within its network. This AI tool aims to streamline administrative tasks, providing support in drafting notes and handling other paperwork by transcribing and summarizing conversations.
Nabla's Copilot product, which debuted in March, will initially roll out to the Permanente Medical Group, comprising over 9,500 physicians and more than 44,000 non-physician staff, starting in Northern California. The service will be available to all clinicians, but participation will be optional. If results are positive, there’s potential for further implementation across Kaiser Permanente’s operations nationwide.
Nabla and Permanente conducted a two-week pilot of the service in August. The swift transition to a commercial agreement might be influenced by ongoing labor actions, highlighting the urgency for solutions in the current healthcare landscape.
It’s important to note that neither Nabla nor Kaiser Permanente is developing technologies that replace the critical work of healthcare professionals. In contrast, other AI firms are pursuing assistant technologies aimed at enhancing clinical assessments. For instance, Corti, another AI healthcare startup, recently secured $60 million in funding to develop its tools, which assist clinicians with patient evaluations. Corti boasts partnerships that enable it to work with over 100 million patients annually.
While AI isn’t a focal point in the current labor actions at Kaiser, it has emerged as a contentious topic in other sectors. In the entertainment industry, for example, the SAG-AFTRA actors union is currently striking over concerns regarding AI’s potential impact on their roles and compensation, particularly in reproducing likenesses and voices.
One of the main issues Nabla aims to alleviate is the extensive administrative work that healthcare professionals must complete after patient visits for compliance and other necessary documentation. This process can take several hours each day. “A doctor might make as many as 4,000 mouse clicks in a 10-hour shift,” said Alexandre Lebrun, CEO and founder of Nabla, in a recent interview.
Often, clinicians delay this work, leading to what’s colloquially called “pajama time,” which refers to the hours late in the day when they catch up on administrative tasks while still in their nightclothes. This added workload contributes to long-standing burnout in the industry.
Nabla’s Copilot operates as a virtual assistant, listening to patient interactions and integrating this information with other documents. It then converts the gathered data into various formatted documents—such as prescriptions and consultation summaries—thus significantly reducing clerical duties. According to Nabla, physicians in the pilot program saved an average of 1.5 hours of administrative time.
Initially launched using GPT-3, the AI model from OpenAI, Copilot has since upgraded to GPT-4 while increasingly relying on its proprietary large language model (LLM). However, Nabla utilizes GPT-4 for specific tasks, such as enhancing the accuracy of its LLM outputs. “GPT-4 remains the gold standard,” Lebrun noted. “Its accuracy and power help us refine our processed feedback.”
Lebrun, who has an impressive background in virtual assistants and natural language processing, previously sold his startup VirtuOz—a “Siri for enterprise”—to Nuance in 2013. He later founded and sold Wit.ai to Facebook, where he contributed to developing the platform's chatbots. Additionally, he played a key role at Facebook’s AI research center in Paris, spearheaded by Turing Award winner Yann LeCun, who is now an advisor to Nabla.
To date, Nabla has attracted nearly $23 million in investment from sources including Tony Fadell, Firstminute Capital, and Artemis. The startup is also in discussions to secure additional funding.
In conclusion, Nabla's collaboration with the Permanente Medical Group represents a significant advancement in utilizing AI to improve efficiency and reduce burnout among healthcare professionals.
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