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Even generative AI critics and detractors must admit the know-how is nice for one thing: transcription.
Should you’ve joined a gathering on Zoom, Microsoft Groups, Google Meet or different video name platform of your selection at any level within the final yr or so, you’ve seemingly seen an elevated variety of AI notetakers becoming a member of the convention name as nicely.
Certainly, not solely do these platforms all have AI transcription options in-built, however there are after all different stand alone companies like Otter AI (utilized by VentureBeat together with the Google Workspace suite of Apps), and fashions similar to OpenAI’s new gpt-4o-transcribe and older open-source Whisper, aiOla, and lots of others with particular niches and roles.
One such startup is San Fransisco-based Freed AI, co-founded in 2022 by former Fb engineers Erez Druk and Andrey Bannikov, now its CEO and CTO, respectively. The concept was easy: give docs and medical professionals a solution to routinely transcribe their conversations with sufferers, seize correct well being particular terminology, and extract insights and motion plans from the conversations with out the doctor having to elevate a finger.
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The concept labored nicely, because the medical scribe platform not too long ago reached a brand new milestone: 20,000 paying clinician customers, Druk shared in a current dialog with VentureBeat, every saving 2-3 hours saved every day in handbook transcription or observe group duties.
With practically 3 million affected person visits per 30 days, Freed is quickly changing into a foundational device for documentation in small and mid-sized healthcare settings.
That point dividend has helped drive a excessive diploma of emotional resonance with prospects, who usually describe the product when it comes to restored work-life stability.
“Clinicians spend greater than 11 hours per week on documentation,” Druk famous. “We constructed Freed to scale back that burden by listening to the go to and writing the medical observe.”
Rising competitors
However Freed’s success has attracted intensifying competitors. Simply at this time, Doximity — the publicly traded doctor networking firm — launched a free ambient AI scribe obtainable to all verified U.S. physicians, nurse practitioners, doctor assistants, and medical college students, as Axios and Stat Information reported.
The transfer highlights a shift towards commoditization within the AI scribe market, the place pricing is rising as a differentiator.
“We wish to present free entry to instruments our prospects have requested for,” Doximity’s chief doctor expertise officer Amit Phull informed Axios, “and so they can work out on their very own whether or not the usual providing — or in the event that they’re paying for one thing else — stacks up.”
That launch follows different high-profile scribe funding rounds within the tens or lots of of thousands and thousands. Whereas buyers pitch visions of EHR-scale platforms, these ambitions nonetheless hinge on proving worth in billing, chart evaluation, and compliance — not simply observe creation.
Nonetheless, Druk and the Freed group consider they’ve an edge.
Turning burnout into alternative
Freed wasn’t born out of a technical brainstorm however from a private ache level. Druk credit the concept to his spouse’s struggles as a training household doctor, the place the fixed burden of note-taking grew to become a every day supply of stress.
“For seven years, each day I heard at residence, ‘I’ve notes to do’ — greater than I heard ‘I like you’ from my spouse,” he mentioned. “That’s how burdensome documentation is.”
That lived expertise became a deliberate product imaginative and prescient: to take away the documentation burden from clinicians and provides them again management over their time and psychological power.
“The concept for Freed was: why is no one constructing one thing to assist clinicians?” Druk mentioned. “Everyone seems to be doing issues to them, not for them.”
Greater than transcription: a modular AI system constructed for drugs
Freed’s system does greater than report and transcribe conversations. The core product is a structured, specialty-aware AI documentation engine that generates medical notes tailor-made to every person’s preferences.
Druk defined that Freed’s structure depends on a extremely modular pipeline. Whereas preliminary transcription is powered by a fine-tuned model of OpenAI’s open supply Whisper mannequin — optimized particularly for medical vocabulary — that’s solely the place to begin.
The corporate’s platform layers on lots of of focused AI duties to extract construction, filter out small speak, regulate terminology to medical requirements, and match user-specific templates.
“It’s not nearly transcription accuracy,” Druk mentioned. “It’s about constructing a system clinicians belief — one which will get smarter over time and adapts to their workflow.”
“Our engine learns from clinician edits,” he added. “Over time, Freed turns into your personal private scribe, not a generic one.”
Greater than 20 in-house clinicians repeatedly audit anonymized notes to enhance mannequin efficiency. And as clinicians make edits, the system continues to study.
Pricing and accessibility
Freed affords simple pricing:
- $90/month for particular person clinicians
- $84/month per person for groups of two–9 clinicians
- Customized pricing for 10+ seats
Every plan features a 7-day free trial, and the corporate affords 50% reductions to college students, residents, and trainees. Freed’s platform can also be compliant with HIPAA, HITECH, and SOC 2 requirements. Audio recordings are encrypted and deleted by default, and clinicians retain full management over their notes always.
Quietly constructing a $20M ARR enterprise
Whereas Freed not too long ago raised $30 million in Sequence A funding led by Sequoia Capital, its monetary momentum has come largely from its present buyer base.
In April 2025, Druk publicly shared on X that Freed has surpassed $20 million in annual recurring income.
That development displays not simply robust product-market match but in addition a transparent go-to-market technique. Reasonably than chase enterprise contracts with massive hospital programs, Freed has centered on small clinics and solo practitioners — a phase usually missed by well being tech distributors.
“We’re centered on the lengthy tail, supporting small clinics — the 40% of clinicians in non-public follow — to assist preserve them alive,” Druk mentioned. “These clinicians don’t have multimillion-dollar IT budgets, however they’re those who want our assist most.”
Freed is now used throughout greater than 1,000 small healthcare organizations, largely within the 1–50 clinician vary.
Druk mentioned he believes this focus is not only strategic, however mission-aligned — serving to preserve small practices viable amid {industry} consolidation.
Wanting forward: benchmarks and EHR Integration
Druk acknowledged a typical problem within the more and more crowded AI scribe/AI transcription market: it’s laborious to differentiate actual efficiency from well-marketed parity.
To deal with this, Freed is growing an inner benchmarking system to measure observe high quality and accuracy throughout 30 distinct standards — with the aim of making an industry-wide framework for evaluating AI scribes.
“There are 100 AI scribes on the market. From the skin, they give the impression of being the identical,” Druk acknowledged. “We wish to assist the market measure what truly issues.”
In parallel, the product roadmap contains smarter EHR integration. Freed not too long ago launched a Chrome extension to help seamless observe transfers, and upcoming releases will embrace extra automation round inputting notes into frequent EHR programs.
Clinician suggestions highlights private impression
Past utilization metrics and product options, Freed’s impression is most clearly captured in person tales. Clinicians report reclaiming nights, weekends, and in some instances, total careers.
Druk recalled a name with one doctor who informed him she had been making ready to close down her non-public follow after 10 years — till she tried Freed and altered her thoughts.
One other clinician mentioned, “I’ve been training for 44 years — why didn’t you construct this 30 years in the past? I can get pleasure from my follow once more.”
In a survey carried out with one enterprise buyer, 100% of clinicians reported improved work-life stability. Eighty % mentioned they had been happier of their jobs, and 80% believed they had been delivering higher affected person care.
“We take this cloud that’s hanging over clinicians’ heads — the stress of documentation — and we take away it,” Druk mentioned. “That’s what Freed is about.”
