He left medicine to build an AI tool – now, it’s worth $460 million
Dr. Thomas Kelly is the co-founder and CEO of Heidi.
Courtesy of Thomas Kelly
Thomas Kelly graduated from medical school in 2017 and eventually became a doctor; The career he dreamed of in his childhood and worked for years. But once he started practicing, Kelly realized the job was different than he imagined.
“My years as a doctor [was] very limited. “I only have 10 minutes for the patient,” he told CNBC Make It. “I was realizing I had 100 patients a day to see, and [was] “Always in a hurry and always coordinating 700 tests and a million tasks.”
“In a perfect world… [patients] “When they needed it… I would understand their families, remember them deeply, and then check in on them regularly,” she said. But the reality was that, like many other clinicians, she faced “incredible burnout” while working in the field.
Inspired to tackle this problem, Kelly developed an AI tool that helps transcribe medical visits, create clinical notes, and more to reduce the burden on doctors and clinicians.
Now, the 33-year-old is the co-founder and CEO of AI medical writer Heidi. company announced A $65 million Series B round took place in October, valuing the company at $465 million.
early discovery
Growing up in Melbourne, Australia, Kelly was inspired to pursue medicine by her primary care physician.
“I loved my primary care doctor…He was like the pinnacle of using your intelligence and knowledge for good,” Kelly said. “He always had a great plan. He was very friendly, had a great bedside manner, but he was also always incredibly sharp and intelligent.”
This experience stayed with him. During college, he explored other interests such as mathematics and computer science and eventually decided to study medicine. He enrolled at the University of Melbourne, where he started medical school in 2013.
While studying medicine, Kelly also started a side business publishing educational videos. YouTube and lectured to students interested in medicine.
Surprisingly, the videos began attracting more students than he could handle at the time, and what started as a hobby gradually turned into a small business. To better manage her time during her tutoring business, Kelly began experimenting with creating artificial intelligence tools.
“The first AI product I tried to make was an interview tutor that people could practice with,” Kelly said. He added that this tool, called “Oscar”, allows students to practice speaking with a medical interviewer and that approximately 20,000 students have used this tool by 2020.
“This was the seed that grew into Heidi,” he said.
As Oscar developed, Kelly began to realize his broader potential. “There wasn’t [single] It was a lightbulb moment,” Kelly said, but he realized that if an AI tool could understand a conversation between a student and a medical doctor, it could do the same for a patient and a doctor.
“Then you can create clinical notes. You can potentially do differential diagnosis. You can complete tasks,” he said. “This root [of] medicine. “This is a very sophisticated, very technical, deep and complex conversation, but it’s still a conversation.”
make a leap
By 2021, Kelly was faced with a big decision: to fully pursue his medical career and begin training as a vascular surgeon, or to take a career break and work on developing his AI tool to serve not only medical students but also clinicians and physicians.
“I took a step forward,” Kelly said. “[I thought] If I don’t take this chance, I will regret it forever. How many surgical interns are there who are good enough at math, have work experience, and can produce this product? I don’t think there are many.”
“Maybe it was arrogance, but I thought if anyone could start this company, it would be me, and let’s try it and see what happens,” he said.
So Kelly officially left her medical career behind in 2021 and did her best to build Heidi up. Today, the tool helps doctors alleviate some administrative tasks such as creating documentation, clinical notes, and more.
Heidi has grown into a strong business and has raised nearly $100 million in funding.
“At one point I just [did the] introspection… if you were living in a nursing home and your family was around you, what are the things you would regret? For me, I definitely would have regretted not trying,” Kelly said.
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