Start-up Funding myScribe receives EXIST start-up grant
2 February 2023
published by hei_INNOVATION
With the idea of simplifying the documentation process for doctors with the help of artificial intelligence, an interdisciplinary team of young scientists, supported by the transfer agency hei_INNOVATION, has successfully applied for an EXSIST start-up grant. On 1 October 2022, the 12-month funding phase began, during which the myScribe team will be supported in the implementation of their start-up project by the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) with a funding amount of €125,000.
myScribe aims to substantially reduce the documentation workload for doctors by automatising the documentation process in an intuitive web application with the help of Natural Language Processing (NLP). All bullet-point text and voice entries made by the medical staff are automatically completed on the basis of previous patient histories. Through the simple entry of patient-specific tasks, examination results and other data, visit lists as well as doctor's letters are automatically generated and produced by a AI-supported text generation in order to reduce the documentation effort.
The idea for myScribe came from the daily work routine that co-founder and assistant doctor Ira Stoll experienced after her medical studies: A lot of bureaucracy and little patient contact. Following the example of the American Scribes, where interns or students accompany doctors and record all results by hand, the myScribe team developed a software that, in contrast to the alternative forms of documentation used so far, is not only digitalised but also largely automated. Based on a typical working day of the assistant doctor, a time saving of over 50% could be determined in the first version of myScribe. Due to the significant time savings, the business model can achieve both a considerable financial added value for the hospital - through additional treatments in the saved working time - and a better work-life balance for the staff.
Through Ira Stoll, who completed her medical studies at the University of Heidelberg, the myScribe founding team has medical expertise and positioning in the health sector. Lars Ewert provides the technical know-how as a full-stack software developer and has programmed the first version of the software. He studied service engineering at the DHBW Mannheim. The team is supported by Prof. Jürgen Hesser, head of the Chair for Data Analysis and Modelling in Medicine at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Scientific Computing (IWR).
myScribe was accompanied and advised by the University of Heidelberg's transfer agency hei_INNOVATION during the application process for the EXIST start-up grant. “The expertise of Bartosz Kajdas for start-ups at hei_INNOVATION not only helped us a lot with the application, but also afterwards to create an innovative company from our individual expertise,” explains the founding team.
After successful admission to the LifeScience Accelerator BW, the myScribe team developed a strategy in cooperation with business students from the Mannheim Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (MCEI) at the University of Mannheim. This includes technical aspects as well as the market entry strategy and a financing and pricing model for the myScribe software as SaaS. Interest in the MyScribe software has already been confirmed by two Letters of Intent. Currently, the application is being tested in the LivingLab@UMM in everyday hospital use. In addition, the team is currently participating in the AI Garage accelerator programme and won the MEXI Start-up Prize Mannheim 2023 in the technology category in December 2022.
The EXSIST Start-Up Grant supports university graduates, scientists and students throughout Germany in preparing their technology-oriented and knowledge-based start-ups. The EXIST funding programme is financed by the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action.
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