Leading Women's Health Care Company Partners with Suki to Offer Digital Voice Assistant for its Physicians

Unified Physician Management introducing AI-powered, voice-enabled tool across a network of over 1,500 women's health providers to maximize clinician time with patients

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Suki

Jun 11, 2019, 06:00 ET

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., June 11, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Unified Physician Management (Unified) announced today that it is teaming up with Suki to offer an artificial intelligence-powered, voice-enabled digital assistant to its national network of women's health care providers. Suki uses a combination of voice commands from physicians and the context in which they practice to create a clinically accurate note that is then sent to an electronic health record (EHR) system.

"Women's health care is incredibly personal, and Suki helps providers to concentrate on providing exceptional care by lowering the barrier created by EHRs," said Matt Eakins, MD, Chief Operating Officer at Unified. "Suki not only helps our providers more accurately document the care they deliver, but enhances clinician experience and helps us address provider burnout."

Unified has medical practice affiliations in nine states including Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Washington, plus the District of Columbia. More than 2 million women receive care from medical practices affiliated with Unified, who also deliver 100,000 babies annually. Overall, obstetrics care delivered at these private practices accounts for one in every 40 U.S. births.

Suki is available to Ob-Gyn practices beginning this month, and can integrate with multiple EHR systems. Physicians at Unified medical affiliates need less than 30 minutes of training with Suki, allowing it to be deployed and productive on day one.

Over time with use, Suki can distill a doctor's conversation with a patient into an actionable plan, based on the doctor's known preferences and clinical practice guidelines. A doctor can tell Suki, "I performed a well woman exam" for a patient, and Suki knows how to create relevant content for the note — and the resulting note is tuned not only to the doctor's medical specialty, but also to their vocabulary and style.

The digital assistance streamlines documentation inside patient EHRs and improves data access, which helps physicians create appropriate care plans. The overall care experience can also improve as physicians' time is freed from administrative tasks — giving patients and providers more one-on-one time. Data on using Suki over a one-year period across multiple specialties show up to a 70 percent reduction in the amount of time physicians spend on medical notes. (In comparison, for every hour of direct clinical facetime with a patient, physicians spend nearly two additional hours on medical paperwork.)

"Partnering with a company like Unified and its rapidly growing national network of women's health care providers allows us to continue giving doctors more control of the time in their day — at scale — and we're looking forward to sharing details on additional collaborations that are in the works soon," said Nathan Gunn, MD, Suki's chief operating officer.

The partnership with Unified builds on a recent collaboration with Sutter Health that Suki announced in March 2019. Today, Suki is used across the country, accounting for more than 1,500 patient interactions every week.

To learn more about using Suki in clinical practice, visit get.suki.ai for details.

About Suki
Suki is an AI-powered, voice-enabled digital assistant for doctors that lifts the burden of documentation, enabling them to focus on what they love: treating patients. By using artificial intelligence, Suki is able to be personalized to each doctor, gets smarter as they use it, and is rapidly and inexpensively scalable. Moreover, it is easy to implement and even easier to use, not getting in the way of the physician and the patient. Suki is like having an assistant in the exam room who knows how a doctor practices and, as a result, makes the work day easier. Suki was founded by Punit Soni – a former senior executive at Google and Flipkart – and Karthik Rajan, who previously led IT infrastructure for Salesforce. Its team includes technologists from Apple, Google, Salesforce, and 23andMe, as well as physicians from the University of California, San Francisco and Stanford. Headquartered in Redwood City, Calif., Suki is backed by investors such as Venrock, First Round, Social Capital, and Marc Benioff. To learn more, visit suki.ai, or follow them on AngelList, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

About Unified Physician Management
Unified provides innovation, technology and business support to more than 1,500 Ob-Gyn providers across the United States to help their affiliated medical practices transform women's healthcare for their patients. Their aspirational vision that all women should have the best healthcare in the world, Unified is driven by its action-driven core values and forward-thinking business model. Unified has grown dramatically in the past 10 years, and operates today in Arizona, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Washington. Unified is backed by funds managed by the Private Equity Group at Ares Management, L.P., a publicly traded, leading global alternative asset manager with approximately $121 billion of assets under management as of June 30, 2018.