The health-tech company’s next-generation AI platform will use direct integrations where it can and take control of the keyboard and mouse where it can’t.
Heidi Health is rolling out AI agents that can navigate electronic medical records and other clinical software even without direct integration, as Australia’s newest health-tech unicorn pushes its scribe technology deeper into the day-to-day running of healthcare.
The Melbourne-founded company launched Heidi II on Tuesday, which moves beyond documenting consultations to carrying out multi-step administrative tasks including chart preparation, referrals, follow-ups, recalls and searches of patient records.
Crucially for the Australian market, where interoperability between clinical systems remains patchy, the technology has been designed to work even when Heidi does not have a direct connector into an EMR.
Heidi co-founder and CEO Dr Thomas Kelly told The Medical Republic that direct integration remained the preferred approach, but the new platform had another option.
“If it’s not possible, then as part of this release there is a computer-using agent. So basically, Heidi can take the keyboard and the mouse,” he said.
“It’s heavily guard-railed, so it’s built specifically for healthcare. We can’t take any write actions, we can’t take any TGA-limiting actions. So, things like investigation, diagnosis, and management [are out], but we can navigate systems.
“We can read, navigate through different patients. The agent will basically use the UI [user interface] like a like a doctor might, and then create a summary for the clinician.”
Heidi’s expansion comes as it faces growing competition in Australia from rivals with deeper integrations into practice management and electronic medical record systems.
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Dr Kelly said Australia’s lack of an interoperability regime comparable with the US 21st Century Cures Act made integration with some clinical systems more difficult.
“Obviously, our preference, and it is much easier to have medical record integrations with our partners,” he told TMR.
“But we obviously, don’t have any Cures Act standard access scheme in Australia, so it does make it hard sometimes for some systems. So, this is an alternative for our users.”
The computer-use function can also be taught to navigate software unfamiliar to Heidi. A user can demonstrate a workflow, such as how to submit a billing claim, which the system can then reproduce, subject to its underlying restrictions and clinician oversight.
“But regardless of what our user shows us, there’s an underlying constitution of how we built the agent,” Dr Kelly said.
“It will draft the action, but it also requires the clinician to review it before you actually submit the claim.”
Despite that capability, Dr Kelly stressed that computer use was not the company’s preferred long-term solution.
“Ultimately the computer use aspect of Heidi is really a workaround. The best way to do this is with a proper connector,” he said.
Heidi wants those connectors to extend across the clinical technology stack, including primary care and allied health software, patient engagement platforms, calendars, inboxes and billing systems.
Dr Kelly said the aim was not to displace those products but to create an AI layer capable of taking action across them.
For general practice, that could mean setting an agent loose on a patient list to identify people eligible for a new Medicare initiative and preparing personalised recall messages.
“You could set Heidi two up to just go run and do that,” Dr Kelly said.
“It may take hours and lots of approvals, but that that’s something that maybe you at the clinic don’t have time to do.”
As part of the launch, agents can also be saved and scheduled as “Routines” and deployed across patient lists. Early uses include pre-charting an entire day’s patients, analysing practice visits and referral communications, and finding patients due for immunisations, pathology, screening or recalls.
The move puts Heidi into closer contact with practice management and electronic medical record vendors that are developing their own AI capabilities.
But Dr Kelly ruled out turning Heidi itself into an Australian EMR.
“I think it’s a bad business for a few reasons for us. It’s a good business for others, but not a good business for us,” he told TMR.
“The reason it’s not good business for us is one, it’s not what I’m passionate about.
“I don’t think we’re going to double healthcare capacity and really make the healthcare system better for patients by adding another record system. There are a lot of record systems. It’s not where transformation is going to happen.”
Instead, the company sees its role as building the AI that sits alongside those systems and, ultimately, takes on more complex clinical work.
“Transformation will happen where AI systems can start to do elements of what doctors can do because that will really increase the capacity,” Dr Kelly said.
“Con I imagine Heidi one day doing a repeat? Yes. Can I imagine Heidi one day doing some triage? Yes. Can I imagine Heidi, for some conditions, prescribing one day? Yes. Will that be very complicated regulatory roadmap? Yes. And will it be supervised by our doctors? Yes.”
There may also be EMR-type solutions for countries or markets “where it makes sense”, said Dr Kelly.
“Like for example, in South Africa, they rely on paper and there are no medical records,” he said.
“Would we build some modules to maybe make that possible? Perhaps. But that doesn’t mean we’re definitely not going to be running a medical record for Aussie GPs.”
For now, the Australian product has been deliberately restricted from autonomously prescribing, diagnosing or ordering investigations, functions which could bring it within the TGA’s medical device framework.
But Dr Kelly said the current version had been built with those regulatory boundaries in mind and acknowledged that Heidi’s longer-term plans were likely to cross into regulated territory.
“In what we’re currently releasing, it’s not relevant. But where we will go definitely will become relevant,” he said.
Heidi II also expands the company’s evidence-search capability, with access to full-text journal content from sources including the New England Journal of Medicine, Wiley and Cochrane, alongside BMJ Group clinical decision-support information.
The platform begins rolling out gradually in Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada, with Dr Kelly saying all of the announced capabilities would ultimately be available to users in those markets.
He said Heidi II would launch in English and French, with more languages to follow. The product capabilities will not be available in the UK or EU, due to tighter AI regulations.
Founded in Melbourne, Australia, Heidi has raised US$436.6 million from global investors including Blackbird, General Catalyst, LocalGlobe, Point72 Private Investments, Headline, Phoenix Court’s growth fund Latitude, Possible Ventures, Glitch Capital and Archangel.
Heidi said it currently supports around 2.8 million patient interactions each week in 110 languages from 190 countries.
