Podiatrist Lucia Byrne set up her podiatry practice in Donegal town three years ago. As it became busier and busier, she found herself struggling to cope with the volume of patient notes that needed to be written up each day.
Her fiance, Chris Cornwall, a software engineer, tried out several software tools that were supposed to help. In reality, they didn’t, and this prompted the couple to pool their clinical and IT expertise to develop Clinic Notes AI, which automatically generates medical notes and referral letters.
“With Clinic Notes AI, a practitioner can turn hours of writing up notes into minutes. The aim of the system is to streamline workflow and let practitioners get back to what they love – caring for patients,” Cornwall says.
“Lucia knew first-hand how different each practice is, so Clinic Notes is built with customisable features to suit both solo practitioners and larger teams. For example, some clinicians want a template for brief notes with headings whereas others prefer a format that allows the notes to run to several pages if required.”
Clinic Notes AI was launched last September. The initial product was aimed at podiatrists with features tailored specifically to their needs. However, the couple quickly discovered that other health professionals were trying out their system which, Cornwall says, can be tweaked to suit different medical disciplines and languages other than English.
“One of the advantages of our system is that it comes fully integrated with Cliniko (a widely used practice management software) with no need to paste notes or pay for integration. We also plan to integrate with more EHR [electronic health records] systems in the near future,” Cornwall says.
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Cornwall has applied AI in several different ways to develop Clinic Notes. Its first function is to record consultations, with the patient’s permission, usually on a laptop. After the consultation, the AI automatically transcribes the recording into structured patient notes presented in the format the practitioner has selected.
Finally, the notes are integrated directly into Cliniko with no need for the manual entry of any information. Clinic Notes is GDPR-compliant and the platform features advanced encryption and strict access controls to protect patient data.
The next step is to widen the application of the system and the company is now looking at potential options to fund it. Cornwall says it will take about €150,000 to support the planned development.
So far, the main investment in Clinic Notes AI has been time (and about €10,000 in personal savings), as Cornwall has done the development work himself. He is currently on the New Frontiers programme at ATU Sligo.
The revenue model is SaaS, with a monthly fee of €49 for a single licence while fees for multiples users are negotiable. Cornwall says the onboarding process is quick and that the company provides set-up, training and ongoing support.
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To date, the couple have promoted Clinic Notes AI by word of mouth, attending conferences and making themselves known to the podiatry community. As this only runs to a few hundred practices in Ireland, the big growth opportunities lie in Britain and Australia.
Clinic Notes is based in Donegal and both Cornwall and Byrne are graduates of the University of Galway. Before setting up the podiatry practice, Byrne was working as a senior podiatrist with the HSE while Cornwall was a software developer with the messaging company, Webtext.
“Apart from not having to work overtime to write up my notes, what I really like about the system is that it restores the human connection with patients during consultations,” Byrne says. “Previously I was staring at a screen and typing notes when someone was talking to me. Now I can look at them and interact properly and that’s much better.”
