Suki, maker of an AI-backed healthcare voice tool, announced it is collaborating with Google Cloud to enhance its Suki Assistant tool using Google's Vertex AI platform. 

Google's Vertex AI is a search engine that allows organizations to build their own generative AI-enabled search engines. It enables companies to search patient data, including clinical sources like FHIR data and clinical notes. It also includes Med-PaLM, a generative AI technology that utilizes Google's LLMs to answer medical questions.

Suki Assistant is an AI-enabled voice tool that generates notes, does dictation, recommends codes and answers clinicians' questions. The offering can be used with EMRs to copy clinical notes into the EHR. 

At this time, a select group of physicians will have access to Suki and Google Cloud's patient summarization feature. The company says the Q&A functionality will be available beginning in 2025. 

"These new capabilities represent much-needed advancement in administrative support for clinicians, empowering them with more time to dedicate to what matters most — patient care," Punit Soni, CEO and founder of Suki, told MobiHealthNews in an email. 

"We've heard from countless physicians in our network that patient summaries would be a game-changer in providing more personalized care, helping with the lengthy medical document review process," Soni said. "By streamlining this process, along with adding the new Q&A tool, we aim to enable clinicians to make more informed treatment decisions more efficiently. We hope these innovations will help our clients create a healthcare environment where clinicians can deliver truly individualized, high-quality care to every patient who needs it." 

THE LARGER TREND

Last year, Google announced it added new generative AI-powered capabilities to its Vertex AI platform for health and life sciences companies, which included adding Med-PaLM to its offerings. 

Earlier this year, Suki raised $70 million in Series D funding, bringing its total raise to $165 million. The company scored $55 million in Series C funding in 2021, two years after closing a $20 million Series C funding round. 

In October, Suki announced a partnership with Zoom, a maker of enterprise video conferencing platforms, to use Suki's AI engine, Suki Platform, to generate clinical notes and embed AI capabilities into its offering.