discharging patients, transitioning them between providers, and providing daily progress notes are some of the most crucial and time-consuming tasks a physician faces. Dallas-based Pieces Technologies was created to bring efficiency to the process by leveraging artificial intelligence. Its platform is now in place at hospitals across the country, where AI generates notes for doctors to review.
In the last year, Pieces has gone from completing one million patient summaries to four million in 96 different clinical specializations and securing partnerships with Parkland Health, Children’s Health, and Texas’ top-ranked hospital, Houston Methodist.
The company began by using AI to turn terabytes of information into 150-word synopses of patient histories, updated every two minutes as it receives more data. The summaries can be used in physician notes or handoffs in what Pieces CEO Dr. Ruben Amarasingham, an internal medicine physician, calls a “Here’s the deal” statement.
The platform has since been expanded to include discharge summaries, which are updated daily, and provide information the next physician will need for follow-up care after the patient leaves the hospital. Pieces’ ability to write daily progress notes is another time-saving feature essential to documentation for billing purposes.
More recently, Pieces has launched stealth pilot programs with multiple local and national health systems and has quadrupled its sales pipeline, Amarasingham says. The company also is looking to move into the outpatient space. Other innovations are on the way.
Pieces in Your Pocket is a mobile version of the tech. Physicians can speak on their phones, and the program transcribes the info and adds it to health records. “The goal is to allow them to get off their screens and go back to the traditional practice of medicine, where they [spend more time with] the patient,” he says.
In September, Pieces completed a $25 million growth round with significant participation from Children’s Health. The company also recently landed a $2 million National Institutes of Health grant to be a patient-facing version of the technology. It hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Earlier this year, the Texas Attorney General looked into Pieces’ AI accuracy reporting, and the two entered an agreement to have a third party evaluate the technology.
“The idea is to be more than clinical and assist the patient in navigating their cancer care,” Amarasignham says, “building on the strength of the work we’ve done.”
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