Suki is an AI voice company that helps physicians complete records and other administrative tasks substantially faster. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Suki founder and CEO Punit Singh Soni to learn more.
Punit Singh Soni’s Background
Before launching Suki, Soni was the Chief Product Officer of Flipkart – which is the popular $15 billion Indian e-commerce company. And Soni spent more than a decade at Google, where he worked on various products, including Search and Mobile Apps. Soni said:
“When I began thinking about starting a company, I knew I wanted it to have a true societal impact. I spent several months shadowing doctors and saw that oftentimes, the doctors were the most distracted people in the exam room. They were often focused on the computer rather than giving patients their full attention – thus Suki was born.”
Formation Of Suki
How did the idea for Suki come together? Soni shared:
“I was driven to start Suki in order to solve a need I saw in the market. Long before it was exacerbated by the pandemic, clinician burnout continues to be a major issue facing healthcare systems and clinicians across America. According to a recent study, 82% of our doctors do not recommend their profession to their kids. “
“Additionally, according to a paper recently published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, physicians would require more than 27 hours a day to deliver all of the clinical administrative work asked of them. This is a societal, public health problem. I believe that when utilized properly, AI and voice technologies can transform healthcare and help relieve administrative burdens. Suki has spent years investing in our technology to develop a suite of solutions that reduce burnout, improve the quality of care, and increase ROI for healthcare systems.”
“Our mission at Suki is to make healthcare tech invisible and assistive so that clinicians can focus on patient care. Our core product, Suki Assistant, is an AI voice assistant that helps with clinical documentation, coding, and information retrieval. Clinicians can use Suki in ambient mode, where Suki will automatically generate a note by listening to a patient-clinician conversation. They can also dictate or give it commands to do things like pull a list of patient allergies from the EHR. Users have a lot of flexibility with Suki in how they can complete their tasks. And it is the only voice assistant on the market that integrates with commonly used EHRs like Epic, Cerner, Athena, and Elation to create a seamless workflow for physicians.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for Suki so far? Soni reflected:
“My favorite memory has been when I was deploying the product myself in the early days of the company at a clinic in Nashville that is part of a large, nationwide health system. There was a neurologist who had just started using the product. She came out when she saw me, gave me a huge hug, and thanked me for building this solution for doctors. I could see the relief and happiness in her eyes as she saw something built for people like her in mind that could possibly make her more efficient.”
“That was my favorite memory of building Suki. Nothing beats happy users.”
Challenges Faced
What are some of the challenges Suki faced in building the company, and has the current macroeconomic climate affected the company? Soni acknowledged:
“Building a healthcare tech company is not for the faint of heart. To be able to even deploy at a small scale in a clinical setting, one has to build significant infrastructure to ensure privacy, security, scalability, etc.. The sales cycles are insanely long. The regulatory environment is tough (though appropriate). One needs a lot of patience to be in this business. Being mission-oriented also helps.”
“You simply cannot build a company in healthcare unless you are motivated to make a big impact on the lives of people.”
Core Products
What are Suki’s core products and features? Soni explained:
“Suki’s flagship product is Suki Assistant, an AI-powered voice assistant that helps clinicians complete documentation and other administrative tasks 72% faster on average. We also offer our proprietary voice platform, Suki Speech Platform (SSP), to partners who want to create a best-in-class voice experience for their solutions. SSP uses the latest in natural language processing and machine learning to provide industry-leading accuracy and a natural and fast voice experience.”
Evolution Of Suki’s Technology
How has Suki’s technology evolved since launching? Soni pointed out:
“Our goal is to make Suki as intuitive and easy to use as possible, and we use the latest technologies in voice and AI to do so. Using Suki should be as easy as picking up a phone, opening the app, and speaking naturally to it. There’s a lot of tech under the hood to enable that experience. With Suki, users don’t have to memorize rote commands – they can use variations like ‘Suki, what’s my schedule?’ or ‘Suki, who’s my next patient?’ and Suki will understand. This flexibility is powered by natural language processing and understanding techniques.”
“Suki’s dictation is highly accurate across specialties and also across all our users. That’s because we use language models and machine learning to train the models to the terms and vocabularies relevant to each specialty and each user. Suki now has ambient note-generation capabilities – it can listen to a patient-clinician conversation and automatically generate suggestions for the note in seconds. We use generative AI and LLMs for that. Finally, we have invested a lot of effort in what we call our ‘plumbing’ – our EHR integrations and our infrastructure that is scalable and secure.”
“Once the clinician is done with the note in Suki, it flows back to the right sections in the EHR. We’ve worked closely with the EHR companies, like the work we’ve done with Epic to integrate Suki using their ambient APIs, to make sure Suki can integrate with these systems so clinicians can easily adopt Suki into their workflows.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of Suki’s most significant milestones? Soni cited:
“Our main goal with Suki is to leverage the latest technology in order to make a true societal impact and solve a real problem faced by clinicians and healthcare systems in today’s environment. With thousands of users across 30+ specialties in over 100 health systems and clinics across the country, many have reached out to express their gratitude and share how Suki has changed their lives. Some say they were previously considering retiring or going part-time due to burnout or feel much more engaged in patient relationships because they’re not distracted with note-taking during appointments. The positive testimonials are what I value the most and consider a huge metric of success.”
“Over the past few years, Suki’s achievements spanned every area of business, from customer acquisition with a 7x increase in users to product development with new features that further our mission to revolutionize the provider experience. We announced key integrations with major EHRs, including Epic, Cerner, and Athenahealth, using APIs to push/pull data to the right places and streamline workflows. Additionally, we introduced ambient note generation to Suki Assistant, which allows clinicians to easily accept, reject, or edit content suggestions to ensure the accuracy of final notes. Through these milestones, Suki has established itself as a leader in the space and the only scalable solution on the market that encompasses several capabilities.”
Customer Success Stories
Can you share any specific customer success stories? Soni highlighted:
“You can find some clinician and customer success stories on our website. One example is from Dr. Elizabeth Goff, a physician based in VA, who created a short documentary sharing how Suki helped alleviate her negative administrative burdens and increase her work-life balance, thus allowing her to keep practicing full-time – she had previously been considering reducing her practice to part-time. She noted that ‘it’s about trying to find that balance, so I feel that joy and that I’m giving the patients better care. The dictation part of Suki is really nice, but there are other parts that help my workflow go smoothly. The Suki note pulls in the vitals, the medications, and the past problems from the EHR. Those seconds and minutes add up. And very quickly in the visit, the computer gets pushed aside, and I get to talk to the patient, so I’m connecting with the patient during the visit. I’m not looking at the screen. Patients are getting better care.’”
Funding/Revenue
Upon asking Soni about funding and revenue, he commented:
“Suki has experienced tremendous growth on both the user and revenue fronts. Our last funding round was in December of 2021,when we closed a Series C funding round of $55 million, led by March Capital, with additional support from Philips Ventures and all previous investors, including Venrock, Flare Capital, Breyer Capital, and inHealth Ventures. The round was also comprised of super-angels who are leading figures in technology, healthcare, and finance, including Gaingels Group, Pankaj Patel (ex-Chief Development Officer of Cisco), Andrew Deutsch (CEO of RIMA Radiology), and Russell Farscht (former Managing Director of The Carlyle Group).”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is Suki pursuing? Soni assessed:
“The biggest technology company ever built will be in healthcare. If we end up actually making all healthcare technology invisible and assistive, then there will be one more name added to the pantheon of the greatest companies of our generation. Whether we get there or not is for time to decide. But that ambition cannot be measured by TAM.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates Suki from its competition? Soni affirmed:
“AI is just tech. By itself, it doesn’t solve anything. What matters is the user. Did it make their life better? Did we understand their workflows? Does the experience work? Suki’s primary value is that every pixel in the company is in service of the clinician. That culture is what makes us different. Anyone can build a product. But the special sauce that makes it useful is empathy. That is the magic that is a key part of Suki.”
“Additionally, we designed Suki to be as easy as picking up a phone, opening the app, and speaking naturally to it. There’s a lot of tech under the hood to enable that experience. With Suki, users don’t have to memorize rote commands – they can use variations like “Suki, what’s my schedule” or “Suki, who’s my next patient,” and Suki will understand. Suki’s dictation is highly accurate across specialties and also across all our users. That’s because the solution uses language models and machine learning to train the models to the terms and vocabularies relevant to each specialty and each user. It is also an all-in-one solution that can handle various tasks from ambient note generation utilizing generative AI to coding and voice commands plus it integrates into all major EHRs to streamline workflows.”
“Suki is pure software, meaning it is powered by real tech and not people, therefore, making it an affordable solution. We focused on this so we can make this product mainstream and available to the majority of healthcare. Suki is the one company that allows providers to do all three types of documentation (dictation, commands, and ambient) in one application. The flexibility of our modalities, as well as the fact that the product can be used across almost any device (IOS, Android, Web, Windows, and Mac), provide the necessary choices that providers seek when looking for a new tech solution. If we cannot deploy a scalable solution that a majority of clinicians across specialties can use, then we do not consider our work successful.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of Suki’s future company goals? Soni concluded:
“Our mission is to make healthcare technology invisible and assistive so clinicians can focus on what they love: patient care. We want to be able to help every clinician who needs more time back, and we are just scratching the surface of what we can do. There are so many potential applications of our technology, from simplifying the orders process to helping nurses complete their tasks by voice to enabling clinicians to answer patient portal messages by voice. We want to enhance Suki’s capabilities to resemble that of a real-life assistant. This entails enabling seamless conversations with Suki like you would with a person, where it comprehends your intentions and efficiently completes your requested tasks. We have an ambitious, exciting roadmap of features we’re working on, and I can’t wait to show this work to the world.”
