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<\/p>\nOf course, not all doctors adopt new technology lightly. \u201cEverything in healthcare comes with a healthy dose of scepticism,\u201d Kelly says. \u201cClinicians want to be absolutely sure their tools are safe, that they protect patient data, and that they don\u2019t compromise quality of care.\u201d To win them over, Heidi designed its onboarding so doctors can trial the system privately, feeding it tricky cases to see how it performs.<\/p>\n
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\u201cUsually their first reaction is: holy shit, I can\u2019t believe how good this is,\u201d Kelly says.<\/p>\n
That response has fuelled explosive growth. Since launching in February 2024, Heidi has been used in more than 73 million patient consultations across 116 countries, including over 800,000 consults every week in Australia alone. Locally, it\u2019s now embedded in Monash Health and Queensland Children\u2019s Hospital, with international deployments from the NHS in the UK to Beth Israel Lahey in the US.<\/p>\n
Professor Paul Middleton, senior specialist in pre-hospital and emergency medicine, says that key technologies like AI will ease the forthcoming strain.<\/p>\n
\u201cPatients will receive a vastly different experience [in the future] and medical teams will focus on providing high-quality healthcare,\u201d he says. \u201cBedside real-time analytics, modelling and geolocation, assessing epidemiology of disease on a local basis to address prevalence, orders for tests and scans, and patient transfers will all be powered by AI.\u201d<\/p>\n
Heidi Health hasn\u2019t had an entirely smooth ride. In 2023, when OpenAI released GPT-4, the entire premise of building Heidi\u2019s own medical language models was suddenly upended. \u201cWe\u2019d spent years building our own tech, then overnight, anyone could launch a competitor,\u201d Kelly says.<\/p>\n
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Blackbird Ventures partners Phoebe Harrop, Tom Humphrey and Michael Tolo.Credit: Blackbird<\/p>\n
The company responded by tearing up its business model, laying off 60 per cent of staff, and pivoting to a free, product-led approach. Generating a single note cost between 50 cents and a dollar at the time. \u201cIt turned out what really matters isn\u2019t the AI itself. It\u2019s the product experience and whether doctors actually want to use it.\u201d<\/p>\n
With fresh funding, Heidi now plans to double its headcount, expand in the US, UK and Canada, and continue building features like automated evidence search and patient follow-up calls.<\/p>\n
Investors are bullish. Blackbird investor Michael Tolo says Heidi has the potential to be one of Australia\u2019s most important exports. \u201cHeidi is showing us what it looks like when Australia builds a healthcare company with truly global scale,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cFounded in Melbourne, the product already supports millions of consults every week in over 100 countries, but this is just the beginning. The administrative burden in healthcare is a trillion-dollar problem, and Heidi has a clear line of sight to being the defining company in solving it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they succeed, Heidi won\u2019t just be one of Australia\u2019s great technology companies \u2013 it will be one of the great healthcare companies, full stop.\u201d<\/p>\n