US firm Augmedix to scale up operations in India

Ruchika M. Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 9

US firm Augmedix, a smartglass-based physician productivity platform, will scale up its operations in India. The company, which is into medical scribing, is also looking at setting up base in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

The company has also closed a strategic round of funding worth $23 million from new investors — McKesson Ventures and OrbiMed. The company will use these funds to further scale up its service nationwide and build its platform to drive improvements in physician productivity and patient care.

Company’s CEO and co-founder Ian Shakil today said after Augmedix pioneered the first and largest remote scribe service in the world and built a robust and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA)-secure enterprise platform which is used by physicians in some of the largest, most innovative health systems in the US, they are now looking at opening a new facility in Coimbatore. The company is also in the final stages of opening a facility in Bangladesh, along with its India partners — Chandigarh-based IDS Infotech Ltd. and a Bangladesh-based entity. “We are also exploring the possibility of setting up the facility at Colombo in Sri Lanka,” he said.

Shakil said they were looking at these ventures because a qualified workforce was available here and the attrition rate was also much lower. 

Using Augmedix and Google Glass, physicians in the US retrieve patient’s medical history and document the patient visit without having to interact with a computer. The chart note is created in real time by remote scribes based in highly secured HIPAA-compliant facilities. The physician is then able to review the note and a summary of the visit can be provided to the patient with care instructions.