#Augnito | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

jcmarchi · 5 days ago

Text

Rustom Lawyer, Co-Founder & CEO of Augnito – Interview Series

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/rustom-lawyer-co-founder-ceo-of-augnito-interview-series/

Rustom Lawyer, Co-Founder & CEO of Augnito – Interview Series

Rustom Lawyer is the Co-Founder and CEO of Augnito, a company built on decades of experience in clinical workflows and healthcare technology. With a deep understanding of global healthcare systems and governance, he has been instrumental in developing innovative solutions that streamline clinical documentation and enhance operational efficiency. His expertise in healthcare integrations has shaped Augnito’s mission to transform how clinicians interact with technology, improving accuracy and workflow automation.

Augnito is a leading provider of Voice AI solutions for Clinical Documentation and Ambient Clinical Intelligence, serving more than 500 hospitals and 15,000 clinicians worldwide. Its SaaS solutions enhance workflow automation, ensure accuracy in administrative tasks, and equip clinicians with real-time, evidence-based recommendations and insights.

You started your first company at the age of 19. How did your experience in clinical transcription with the NHS shape your vision for Augnito?

My journey in healthcare technology began when I co-founded Scribetech in the UK at 19 years old. This early venture became a pioneer in clinical transcription services for the National Health Service (NHS), laying the critical foundation for what would eventually become Augnito.

Working with the NHS provided invaluable insights into healthcare documentation challenges on a massive scale. We were selected as a leading supplier on three consecutive national framework contracts, each lasting about five years, giving us the rare opportunity to work with the world’s largest single healthcare organization. Our longstanding relationships with prestigious institutions like Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, University Hospital Birmingham, and Kingston University Trust taught us the intricacies of clinical workflows across diverse specialties.

Those nearly two decades of experience revealed a fundamental truth: documentation was consuming an unsustainable amount of clinicians’ time. We witnessed firsthand how this administrative burden impacted patient care quality and provider satisfaction. This realization ultimately shaped Augnito’s core mission—to create technology that liberates healthcare professionals from documentation burdens while maintaining the highest standards of accuracy and compliance.

The NHS experience also instilled in us a deep appreciation for the importance of data security, interoperability, and scalable solutions that could work across different healthcare environments. These principles remain central to Augnito’s development philosophy today.

Augnito was born out of a pivot from transcription services to AI-driven voice solutions. What were the key factors that led to this strategic shift?

This strategic pivot emerged from several converging factors. First, about nine years ago, we observed our BPO revenue growth flattening due to increasing automation demands across the healthcare industry. Rather than resist this inevitable transition, we decided to disrupt our own business model by investing profits into developing what would become Augnito.

A critical insight drove this decision: we discovered that doctors worldwide spend approximately 50% of their working hours on record-keeping, while nurses spend around 30% on similar tasks. This represented an enormous inefficiency in healthcare delivery—valuable time that could be redirected toward patient care.

The technological landscape was also evolving rapidly. Cloud computing, advanced AI algorithms, and improved speech recognition capabilities created new possibilities that weren’t available when we started Scribetech. We recognized an opportunity to leverage these technologies to address the acute pain point of inefficient clinical documentation and interoperability challenges.

What began as an efficiency tool for our transcription business evolved into a comprehensive solution that could transform clinical workflows entirely. The shift from transcription services to AI-driven voice solutions represented not just a technological upgrade but a fundamental reimagining of how clinical documentation could work— emphasizing speed, accuracy, and seamless integration with existing healthcare systems.

What have been some of the biggest challenges in scaling Augnito from an India-based startup to a globally recognized AI company?

Scaling Augnito globally presented several significant challenges. First and foremost was ensuring data interoperability across vastly different healthcare systems. Healthcare infrastructure varies dramatically worldwide, with each country maintaining unique regulatory frameworks and documentation standards. Building technology that could integrate seamlessly with these diverse systems required extensive research and development.

Another major hurdle was gaining trust from healthcare professionals. Medicine is understandably conservative when adopting new technologies, especially AI solutions that handle sensitive patient information. Overcoming this skepticism demanded not just technical excellence but also a commitment to building relationships and demonstrating consistent value.

Technical challenges were equally demanding. The diversity of speech patterns, accents, and medical terminologies across regions required sophisticated language models. In India alone, we faced the complexity of numerous regional accents and native languages that needed accurate interpretation in a medical context. This challenge was compounded by the high stakes of healthcare documentation, where even small errors can have serious consequences.

Additionally, helping clinicians transition from legacy systems to AI-powered solutions required careful change management. Many healthcare professionals were accustomed to traditional documentation methods, and facilitating this transition meant creating intuitive interfaces and providing comprehensive support systems.

Perhaps the most persistent challenge has been balancing innovation with practical implementation. While developing cutting-edge AI capabilities, we’ve had to ensure our solutions remain accessible, affordable, and immediately valuable to healthcare providers across different economic contexts and resource settings.

How does Augnito tailor its AI solutions to different healthcare systems, given the diverse regulatory and operational environments across countries?

Augnito approaches this challenge through flexibility in both design and deployment. We’ve created solutions that can be implemented as cloud-based SaaS or on-premises installations, depending on regulatory requirements and institutional preferences. This adaptability is crucial for navigating the diverse landscape of healthcare systems globally.

For regulatory compliance, we maintain rigorous data localization capabilities and implement robust security measures including encryption and access controls. Our systems are designed to adhere to regional standards like HIPAA, GDPR, ADHICS, and various other national healthcare data protection regulations, ensuring patient data remains secure regardless of geography.

Linguistically, we’ve developed our technology to support over numerous languages for conversation capture, making it truly inclusive across diverse populations. This multilingual capability is particularly valuable in regions with multiple official languages or dialectal variations.

Integration flexibility is another key aspect of our approach. We offer APIs, HL7 interoperability, and SDKs with both low-code and no-code options, allowing seamless connection with existing healthcare IT infrastructure. This means Augnito can integrate with any PACS/RIS/LIS/HIS/EMR system, including major platforms like Epic, Intersystems, Cloud Solutions, Cerner, and more, without disrupting established workflows.

Our clinical specialization further enhances adaptability. Augnito supports over 55 medical specialties, from General Medicine to Oncology and Radiology, each with its unique terminology and documentation requirements. This specialized approach ensures our solutions are clinically relevant across different practice settings and healthcare delivery models.

Finally, our human-centric design philosophy guides customization efforts, enabling us to provide personalized assistance that helps clinicians and enterprises adopt and integrate our technology without changing their existing workflows. This detailed attention to user experience has been critical to our successful adaptation to diverse healthcare environments worldwide.

Omni is positioned as a groundbreaking AI platform for clinical documentation. How does it differ from traditional speech-to-text solutions?

Omni represents a fundamental evolution beyond traditional speech-to-text technology. While conventional solutions simply convert spoken words to written text, Omni leverages Ambient Clinical Intelligence and Generative AI to create a comprehensive, context-aware system that serves as an intuitive clinical partner rather than a mere transcription tool.

The first key difference is Omni’s ability to capture and transcribe natural clinical conversations in multiple languages in real-time. Unlike traditional solutions that require structured dictation, Omni can interpret natural dialogue between providers and patients, eliminating the need for clinicians to modify their communication style or remember specific commands.

More importantly, Omni doesn’t merely record interactions—it contextualizes them. The system intelligently structures information into appropriate clinical categories, making it EMR-ready and even assigning clinical codes automatically. This represents a shift from reactive to agentic AI—systems capable of proactive, goal-oriented reasoning rather than simply responding to commands.

Another significant distinction is Omni’s sophisticated Clinical Documentation Integrity (CDI) capabilities and automatic code retrieval for ICD 10, SNOMED, or SBS codes. These features not only save time but also improve billing accuracy and reduce claim denials, directly impacting healthcare organizations’ financial performance.

The impact on clinical workflows is substantial, with doctors saving an average of 2+ hours per day and experiencing a 60% reduction in documentation time. This efficiency gain addresses the burnout epidemic among healthcare professionals while simultaneously improving documentation quality.

Perhaps most importantly, Omni embodies our philosophy that transformative technology should operate silently in the background, enhancing care without intrusion. The system adapts to individual clinician preferences, offering unmatched

customization while maintaining compliance with global health standards—making it truly omnipresent yet invisible in the clinical environment.

AI in healthcare is often met with skepticism regarding accuracy and security. How does Augnito ensure high accuracy (99%) and compliance with global data privacy regulations?

Achieving and maintaining our 99% accuracy rate begins with our sophisticated Machine Learning algorithms and Natural Language Understanding capabilities that allow precise interpretation of medical terminology across over 50 specialties and sub specialties. This accuracy is available immediately upon implementation—no voice training required, which is a significant advantage over many competing solutions.

Our technology incorporates the entire language of medicine, eliminating spelling errors while accurately deciphering various accents of spoken English. This is particularly important in diverse healthcare environments where practitioners come from different linguistic backgrounds.

For data security and privacy compliance, we employ a multi-layered approach. We implement robust encryption techniques to protect patient data during both transmission and storage, ensuring the highest level of security. Our systems enforce stringent access controls that restrict patient data access to authorized personnel only.

We maintain comprehensive audit trails that record all activities related to patient medical record access and modification, creating accountability and transparency throughout the system. This detailed tracking capability is essential for compliance with regulations like HIPAA, which can impose hefty fines for violations.

Our flexible deployment options further enhance security compliance. Whether clients prefer cloud-based SaaS or on-premises installation, we ensure industry-standard compliance and data localization according to regional requirements. This adaptability is crucial for navigating the complex global landscape of healthcare data regulations.

The foundation of our approach to both accuracy and security is our 20+ years of experience in healthcare documentation. This extensive background gives us a deep understanding of both clinical language nuances and the strict compliance requirements that govern protected health information—insights that have been incorporated into every aspect of our technology.

Can you explain how Augnito’s AI improves clinical workflows while reducing physician burnout?

Augnito’s AI directly addresses the documentation burden that contributes significantly to physician burnout—a critical issue affecting 63% of clinicians globally. By automating and streamlining documentation processes, our solutions create multiple workflow improvements that collectively reduce stress and improve efficiency.

The immediate impact comes from time savings—our solutions can save clinicians up to three hours per day on documentation tasks. In our case study with Apollo Hospitals, physicians saved an impressive 44 hours each month, representing time reclaimed for patient care or personal well-being. This translates to a 46% increase in overall productivity and a 60% reduction in documentation time. All in just 6 months.

Our Voice AI technology makes clinical documentation four times faster than traditional methods with 99% accuracy immediately upon implementation. This eliminates the frustration of correcting errors or repeating documentation tasks, common sources of workplace stress.

Augnito Spectra’s dynamic templates system and personalization features like custom vocabularies and macros further streamline workflows. Clinicians can upload predefined templates for various clinical note types and control everything through intuitive voice commands, eliminating repetitive typing tasks.

Omni AI Scribe takes this further by allowing physicians to focus entirely on their patients during consultations while AI handles documentation automatically. This enables doctors to maintain eye contact and engage more meaningfully with patients instead of dividing attention between the patient and the computer screen.

Beyond time savings, our solutions improve documentation quality and reduce claim rejections. This eliminates the administrative headaches associated with resubmitting claims or correcting documentation errors—another source of professional frustration.

The ROI extends beyond clinical satisfaction. Organizations using our solutions have achieved a 21-fold return on investment within just six months, demonstrating that addressing burnout through AI-powered documentation also makes financial sense for healthcare institutions.

What role does Augnito’s AI play in enhancing doctor-patient interactions rather than replacing human decision-making?

I have always maintained that Augnito’s solutions are designed to augment and empower clinicians, not replace their expertise whatsoever. Our technology operates on the principle that transformative healthcare technology should function silently in the background, enhancing care without intrusion.

The most immediate impact on doctor-patient interactions comes from liberating clinicians from documentation burdens during consultations. With Omni AI Scribe, doctors can maintain eye contact and engage more meaningfully with patients instead of typing notes during the encounter. This restores the sanctity of patient-provider interactions—a nurse can simultaneously monitor a critical case and verbally update records hands-free, exemplifying technology that serves rather than disrupts.

We recognize that while AI excels at processing vast amounts of data and identifying patterns, the human elements of healthcare—empathy, intuitive understanding, and complex decision-making—remain irreplaceable. Our AI functions as a sophisticated tool in a physician’s arsenal, much like how the stethoscope revolutionized medicine in its time.

The future we envision is one of seamless collaboration between AI and healthcare professionals. While our AI can transcribe and structure patient conversations, analyze patterns, and suggest potential diagnoses, it’s the physician who contextualizes this information, makes final decisions, and provides the human connection that patients need.

By handling routine administrative tasks, our technology allows clinicians to focus on their core competencies—diagnosing conditions, developing treatment plans, and building therapeutic relationships with patients. In fact, physicians using our solutions potentially have time to see additional patients or spend more quality time with each patient.

Ultimately, our goal is to create technology that makes healthcare more efficient, accurate, and human-centered—enhancing rather than replacing the human intelligence and compassion at the heart of medicine.

How does Augnito integrate with existing healthcare infrastructure like EMRs, and what are the biggest interoperability challenges you’ve faced?

Augnito has designed its integration approach with flexibility and ease of implementation as core principles. As mentioned previously, our solutions integrate seamlessly with any PACS/RIS/LIS/HIS/EMR system, including major platforms like

Epic, Intersystems, Cloud Solutions, Cerner, and more. This versatility is critical in healthcare environments where multiple legacy systems often coexist.

We’ve made integration technically straightforward through our APIs and SDKs, offering both low-code and no-code options. This approach minimizes disruption to existing workflows and reduces implementation timelines. Healthcare organizations can choose between cloud-based SaaS or on-premises installation models based on their infrastructure requirements and security policies.

Despite these capabilities, interoperability remains one of healthcare’s most persistent challenges. The most significant hurdle we’ve encountered is data exchange between different Hospital Information or Medical Record systems. The fragmentation of healthcare data across disparate systems often prevents the creation of comprehensive patient histories.

Another interoperability challenge involves standardization—or lack thereof—across healthcare systems. Different organizations often use varying terminology, data structures, and documentation formats, complicating seamless information exchange. Our systems must be adaptable enough to accommodate these variations while maintaining consistent accuracy and performance.

To address these challenges, we’ve developed a human-centric approach to implementation and integration. We provide personalized assistance to help clinicians and enterprises adopt and integrate our technology without changing their existing workflows. This detail-oriented customer success approach has been instrumental in overcoming interoperability obstacles and facilitating successful deployments.

With increasing competition in AI-powered medical documentation, how does Augnito differentiate itself from other AI-driven healthcare solutions?

Augnito stands apart through several key differentiators, some of which I’ve already touched on, that collectively create unique value for healthcare organizations. First, our proprietary high-quality clinical speech recognition and natural language understanding technology achieves 99% accuracy out-of-box, without requiring voice training. This immediate accuracy eliminates the frustrating “training period” common with many competing solutions.

Our deep healthcare expertise sets us apart—with over two decades of experience in clinical documentation and close partnerships with the NHS and other global healthcare leaders. This domain knowledge is embedded in our solutions, which support over 55 clinical specialties from General Medicine to Oncology and Radiology.

Our technology is specifically designed to understand diverse accents and language patterns. We’ve developed systems that can accurately decipher any accent of spoken English and capture clinical conversations in several languages. This linguistic flexibility is particularly valuable in diverse healthcare environments.

We also differentiate through our human-centric design philosophy, which permeates everything from product development to customer support. Our systems are co-designed with physicians to make them extremely intuitive to use. We provide personalized assistance to help clinicians and enterprises adopt our technology without disrupting existing workflows.

The measurable impact of our solutions provides compelling differentiation. Organizations using Augnito have achieved a 21-fold return on investment within six months. In our case study with Apollo Hospitals, we documented a 46% increase in overall productivity and physicians saving 44 hours monthly.

Perhaps most distinctively, our vision extends beyond mere documentation to creating truly agentic AI—systems capable of proactive, goal-oriented reasoning. Unlike conventional tools that simply respond to commands, our technology contextualizes data, identifies critical insights, and anticipates clinician needs, functioning as an intuitive partner rather than a passive tool.

Finally, we maintain a commitment to continuous innovation, with ongoing R&D investments constantly improving user experience. This forward-looking approach ensures our solutions evolve alongside healthcare needs and technological capabilities.

There’s growing debate about the role of AI in medicine. How do you see AI evolving in healthcare over the next 5-10 years?

I believe we’re at the threshold of a profound transformation in healthcare, with AI evolving from isolated applications to comprehensive ecosystems that impact every aspect of medicine. The global healthcare AI market is projected to reach $188 billion by 2030, reflecting this extraordinary growth trajectory.

In the near term, we’ll see AI revolutionizing diagnostic capabilities, with systems becoming increasingly sophisticated in analyzing medical images and detecting conditions earlier. By 2025, Gartner predicts that 30% of new drugs will be discovered using generative AI, slashing the traditional 10–15-year drug development timeline. The global GenAI healthcare market specifically is projected to grow from $1.96 billion in 2024 to $39.68 billion by 2034—a remarkable 35.1% CAGR.

I anticipate a fundamental shift in how AI is perceived within healthcare organizations. Rather than viewing AI solutions as software products, institutions will increasingly see them as “AI staff” essential team members that handle specific functions alongside human professionals. This perspective shift is significant because it means AI will disrupt not just the enterprise software market (valued in tens of billions) but the services market (valued in trillions).

The next evolution will be toward agentic AI—systems capable of proactive, goal-oriented reasoning with contextual continuity, predictive agency, and appropriate ethical boundaries. In chronic care management, for example, agentic AI integrated with wearable devices could provide personalized voice check-ins analyzing glucose trends, dietary patterns, and exercise motivation levels.

Healthcare organizations are already prioritizing AI implementation, with 45% of healthcare operations leaders considering it a top priority for boosting efficiency. This momentum will accelerate as AI demonstrates tangible benefits like 30% shorter hospital stays, 60% higher patient satisfaction, and billions in cost savings.

The ultimate evolution, however, won’t be measured in market size but in transformed human connections: clinicians freed to heal, patients empowered to thrive, and technology that silently elevates both. The most successful AI implementations will balance efficiency with empathy, creating healthcare systems that are not just technologically advanced but fundamentally more humane.

Thank you for the great interview, readers who wish to learn more should visit Augnito.

0 notes