West Virginia University Medicine is accelerating its rollout of an artificial intelligence transcription software developed by Pittsburgh-based startup Abridge.

A small pilot started in May has grown to over 1,200 doctors, nurse practitioners and physician assistants adopting Abridge to fill out charts while they talk to patients, WVU Medicine leadership said Thursday.

Another 1,600-plus clinicians are eligible across the organization’s 25 hospitals and dozens of doctor’s offices in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Maryland.

The notes aren’t perfect, and medical professionals still have to check them for errors.

Even then, the Morgantown-based system says staff who use Abridge save an average of 11 minutes daily they would have otherwise spent turning rough notes into proper charts. After some initial setup, Abridge feeds conversations directly into Epic, the electronic health record platform used by WVU Medicine.

“We’re creating more time for doctors during the day that they can use for anything,” said Dr. David Rich, chief medical information officer and a pediatrician at WVU Medicine. “They can use it for another patient call. They can use it for a potential last minute add-on patient. Or they can just use it to spend more clinical time thinking about how they’re going to manage the patient.”

Staff who use Abridge also report feeling less stressed or burnt out, according to Rich.

Patient consent is required before clinicians hit record, and the transcriptions are protected by the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act like any other medical documentation.

Abridge and the health records program from Wisconsin-based Epic will be available to Independence Health System if its pending merger with WVU Medicine goes through.

The deal is expected to close this year as long as it earns regulatory approval. Hospitals joining WVU Medicine typically receive its suite of technologies within nine months, according to Rich.

Independence began using Doximity automated notetaking software earlier this month.

UPMC cardiologist Dr. Shiv Rao founded Abridge in 2018 with funding from his employer as well as the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. The company is now valued at more than $5 billion and serves as a home-grown success story for the Southwestern Pennsylvania tech scene.

In a statement, Rao said WVU Medicine’s widespread adoption of Abridge shows how AI can improve rural medical care (many of the health care system’s facilities are in rural areas).

Abridge is also used by UPMC and Allegheny Health Network, where more than 30% of eligible clinicians and over 50% working in primary care are using the tool.

UPMC did not immediately return questions about its implementation of Abridge.

In addition, Abridge has snagged top national names like Johns Hopkins Medicine, Kaiser Permanente and the Mayo Clinic.

The company has the second highest market share in the automated medical scribe space at 30%, slightly smaller than the 33% piece held by Microsoft subsidiary Nuance, according to an October report from Silicon Valley tech investment firm Menlo Ventures.