Everywhere he looked, Dr. Tom Kelly, a trauma surgeon, saw the same problem, doctors drowning in endless paperwork. Determined to change that, he co-founded Heidi Health in 2021 with Waleed Mussa, aiming to build an AI care partner that could handle the administrative side of medicine.
“We wanted to build an AI care partner that would stand alongside clinicians and take care of the admin so that individual providers, like me, can feel empowered to deliver the care which we dedicated our lives to,” Dr. Kelly told TechCrunch.
The company began rolling out its products in early 2024, and in just 18 months, Heidi Health says it has returned more than 18 million hours to frontline healthcare providers, covering over 70 million patient visits in 116 countries.
At the heart of the platform is an AI medical scribe that automates the most tedious parts of a doctor’s day, transcribing notes, generating patient summaries, and tracking tasks. Heidi builds on its own models and integrates with others like Gemini, taking what Dr. Kelly calls a “model-agnostic approach” to optimize for accuracy, latency, and cost.
On Monday, the startup announced a $65 million Series B round led by Steve Cohen’s Point72, bringing its total funding to $96.6 million. Other investors include Goodwater Capital, Headline, Blackbird VC, LG Technology Ventures, and Alumni Ventures.
Heidi also unveiled a new feature, an AI agent that can call patients on behalf of doctors. Alongside the funding news, the company welcomed former Microsoft Chief Medical Officer Dr. Simon Kos and Plaid’s head of revenue Paul Williamson to its leadership team.
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According to Dr. Kelly, investors were drawn to Heidi’s strong adoption metrics.
“They had seen all the scribes before,” he said of Point72. “They’d never seen product adoption and usage metrics like they’d seen in Heidi.”
The company’s growth model includes a free version of the product with premium upgrades, a strategy that’s helped it reach more than 2 million clinicians weekly across hospitals and small practices.
While Heidi joins competitors like DeepScribe, Ambiance Healthcare, and Abridge in the AI scribe market, Dr. Kelly believes its mission goes beyond automation.
“Most conversations in healthcare right now are shaped by developed countries,” he said. “But imagine a world where any healthcare provider, even in war zones, refugee camps, or underserved regions, can use Heidi to increase their capacity and reach more patients.”
For him, the promise of AI in medicine isn’t about replacing doctors, but doubling global healthcare capacity.
“AI will change everything in healthcare,” Dr. Kelly said. “But humanity, our empathy, our connection,remains essential. That’s the true promise of AI. We want to bring it about.”
