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Heidi Health is an ambient AI medical scribe and clinical documentation platform that listens to clinician-patient encounters (or direct medical dictation) and generates structured clinical notes, SOAP progress notes, referral letters, and patient care summaries. Deployed across primary care, specialty clinics, behavioural health, and hospital outpatient departments in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, the Heidi AI scribe pairs real-time medical speech recognition with customizable template prompts under HIPAA, ISO/IEC 27001, and SOC 2 Type II information-security controls.
What Is Heidi Health and Who Runs It?
Founded in Melbourne, Australia, by surgeon Dr. Thomas Kelly and co-founders, Heidi Health Pty Ltd develops the Heidi Health platform across web browsers, desktop applications, and mobile apps (iOS and Android). Whereas first-generation medical dictation software required clinicians to speak punctuation and formatting commands verbatim after a visit, an ambient AI medical scribe processes natural, multi-speaker conversation during an in-person or telehealth consultation, filters out non-clinical small talk, and synthesizes clinically relevant history, exam findings, assessments, and plans.
From a clinical informatics and regulatory compliance perspective, Heidi Health operates as an administrative documentation aid rather than autonomous diagnostic software: the attending clinician reviews, edits, and attests to every generated note before committing it to the legal Electronic Health Record (EHR).
What Is Heidi Health AI and How Does the Interface Work?
Based on Heidi Health’s official platform documentation, using the workspace follows a six-step clinical workflow built around its core interface tabs:
- Obtain Informed Patient Consent: Before starting recording, the clinician confirms verbal or written patient consent for ambient AI transcription in accordance with institutional policy and state/national recording laws.
- Select Consultation Mode (
Transcribevs.Dictate): Inside a new session, the clinician selects Transcribe to capture a multi-speaker patient consultation in real time, or switches to Dictate when summarizing an encounter or procedure post-visit. - Add Pre-Visit Chart Data in the
ContextTab: Before or during the session, clinicians paste supplemental clinical inputs—such as prior pathology results, radiology reports, triage vital signs, or referral letters—into the Context tab so the model incorporates verified baseline values alongside the spoken transcript. - Choose from
Templatesor the Template Community: The clinician selects a target output structure—such as a standard SOAP note, History and Physical (H&P), psychiatric intake, or specialty consultation template—and selects the output detail level (for example, Brief, Goldilocks, or Super Detailed). - Generate and Refine via
Ask Heidi: Clicking Generate note produces the structured clinical note. Clinicians can edit sections inline, adjust custom template block instructions (written in plain text brackets to specify exact headings or bullet rules), or use the Ask Heidi prompt bar to draft secondary artifacts from the same encounter—such as a specialist referral letter, work/school certificate, or plain-language patient handout. - Transfer to the EHR and Manage Data Retention: The finalized note is pushed into the connected EHR (via native integration or SMART on FHIR launch) or copied via one-click structured export, and session transcripts are purged according to the clinic’s configured retention schedule.
Is Heidi Health Free? Tier Structure and Capabilities
A frequent operational question for independent practices and academic trainees is whether the platform is free to deploy. According to Heidi Health’s published product documentation, the platform uses a tiered model:
- Heidi Free (Core Clinician Tier): Available at no cost to individual healthcare professionals, offering unlimited ambient consultation transcriptions, standard clinical note generation, dictations, and access to pre-built and community clinical templates.
- Heidi Pro & Together / Enterprise Tiers: Paid subscription tiers designed for high-volume specialists, multi-provider clinics, and hospital systems. These tiers unlock unlimited custom template creation and editing, secondary document generation (referral letters, patient summaries, billing/coding summaries), voice-style personalization, team template sharing, centralized administrative audit logs, and direct EHR integrations.
Privacy, Security, and Clinical Governance Standards
When hospital privacy officers, Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), or health-system IT security teams evaluate ambient AI scribes for clinical care or clinical research visits, verification centers on four governance controls documented in Heidi Health’s Safety and Compliance specifications:
- Zero Permanent Audio Storage: Encounter audio is streamed and processed transiently in memory to produce the text transcript; raw audio recordings are not permanently stored on Heidi servers.
- HIPAA and Global Privacy Frameworks: For United States healthcare organizations, Heidi Health operates as a HIPAA-compliant service provider and executes formal Business Associate Agreements (BAAs). Internationally, the platform maintains regional data residency and complies with the EU/UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), UK NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit (DSPT) and DCB0129 clinical safety standard, Canada’s PIPEDA/provincial health privacy statutes (PHIPA/HIA), and the Australian Privacy Principles (APP).
- Independent Security Certifications: Heidi Health holds ISO/IEC 27001 certification for its Information Security Management System (ISMS) and SOC 2 Type II attestation verifying operational security controls over time.
- EHR Interoperability Standards: For enterprise deployments, Heidi integrates with major EHRs and practice management systems (including Epic via HL7 SMART on FHIR, Athenahealth, Best Practice, MedicalDirector, and Cliniko) so clinician-reviewed notes map directly into the patient’s encounter record.
Strengths and Operational Limits
- Strengths: Flexible dual-input design combining live audio (
Transcribe) with pasted lab/history notes (Context); customizable plain-language template builder; strong international regulatory certifications (HIPAA, ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II, NHS DCB0129); accessible free baseline tier for individual clinicians. - Limits: Like all ambient LLM documentation tools, generated notes require line-by-line clinician verification before sign-off to prevent omission or misattribution of spoken physical exam findings; nonverbal physical exam maneuvers must be spoken aloud during the visit or typed into the
Contexttab to appear accurately in the Objective section.
Ambient AI Medical Scribe Platforms Compared
Clinical informatics teams evaluating ambient documentation tools typically compare Heidi Health against peer clinical scribe platforms such as Freed AI, Nuance DAX Copilot, and Abridge:
| Platform | Primary Deployment Model | Template & Artifact Flexibility | EHR Integration & Security Baseline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heidi Health | Self-serve individual clinician app (including free tier) through enterprise health-system deployments | Custom user-built templates, community template library, Context tab, and secondary referral/patient letters | Browser/desktop/mobile apps, SMART on FHIR & PM integrations; HIPAA BAA, ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II, NHS DCB0129 |
| Freed AI | Self-serve web and mobile ambient AI scribe tailored to independent clinicians and outpatient groups | Automated SOAP note generation, style learning from clinician edits, patient visit summaries, and referral letters | Browser extension EHR push and copy-paste workflows; HIPAA-compliant with BAA, SOC 2 attested, no audio retention |
| Nuance DAX Copilot (Microsoft) | Enterprise health-system ambient clinical intelligence platform | Specialty-tuned ambulatory and inpatient encounter templates embedded inside enterprise EHR workflows | Deep native integration with Epic (Haiku/Hyperspace) and Microsoft Dragon Medical One; enterprise HIPAA & Azure security |
| Abridge | Enterprise health-system ambient clinical documentation platform | Structured clinical notes with linked audio/transcript evidence spans for rapid clinician audit | Deep bi-directional Epic integration (‘Linked Evidence’ in Hyperspace/Haiku); HIPAA-compliant and SOC 2 Type II attested |
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Heidi Health?
Heidi Health is an ambient AI medical scribe and clinical documentation platform founded in Melbourne, Australia, and used by outpatient clinics, hospital clinicians, and allied health practitioners across the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. It captures live clinician-patient consultations (or direct dictation) and transforms the transcript plus supplemental chart context into structured clinical progress notes, SOAP notes, referral letters, and patient instructions.
Is Heidi Health free?
Yes, Heidi Health offers a free tier (Heidi Free) for individual clinicians that includes unlimited ambient consultation transcription, core clinical note generation, and access to standard community templates. Paid tiers (such as Heidi Pro and Together/Enterprise plans) add unlimited custom template creation, multi-document generation (such as specialist referral letters and discharge summaries), personalized clinical voice adaptation, and direct Electronic Health Record (EHR) integrations.
What is Heidi Health AI and how does it protect patient privacy?
Heidi Health AI combines automatic speech recognition (ASR) tuned for medical terminology with clinical large language models that map encounter dialogue into structured documentation sections without storing raw patient audio recordings after transcription. The platform maintains ISO/IEC 27001 certification and SOC 2 Type II attestation, supports HIPAA Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) in the United States, and aligns with GDPR, PIPEDA, UK NHS DSPT/DCB0129, and Australian Privacy Principles.
Sources
- Heidi Health — Heidi AI Medical Scribe Platform Overview and Clinical Documentation Workflows
- Heidi Health — Heidi Safety, Security, HIPAA, ISO 27001, and SOC 2 Type II Compliance Center
- Heidi Health — Heidi Clinical Note Templates and Custom Prompt Engineering Guide
- Heidi Health — Heidi Free, Pro, and Together Tier Specifications
