San Francisco-based Commure, which develops a suite of software programs designed to help healthcare organizations improve efficiency, recently announced that it will acquire Augmedix, a company that makes ambient AI-powered tools for clinical workflow and documentation.
The $139 million deal will see Augmedix go private and combine with Commure as a wholly owned subsidiary of the parent company.
Since its founding in 2012, Augmedix has been innovating approaches to automated medical transcription and clinical documentation. The company’s technology serves more than 20 major health systems and hundreds of other care sites.
With this acquisition, Augmedix shareholders will receive $2.35 in cash per share upon completion of the proposed transaction.
“As part of Commure, we believe Augmedix will be well-positioned to expand its ambient data recording solutions to more clinicians and health systems, while accelerating our efforts to add more innovative features, integrations, and AI capabilities to our product suite,” Augmedix CEO Manny Krakaris said in a statement.
“Commure is closely aligned with Augmedix’s mission and future vision. We believe the significant resources, deep industry expertise and expanded technology capabilities we gain through this transaction will strengthen our market position, enable us to capitalize on more opportunities and create a strong, forward-looking company.”
Augmedix started as a company dedicated to developing clinical applications for Google Glass and soon received significant funding from venture capital firms such as McKesson Ventures and many others.
Recently, the company has focused more on AI-powered tools to help ease the burden of clinical documentation, embarking on projects with health systems like HCA on hands-free charting and other initiatives.
But Augmedix’s stock price tanked earlier this year. Despite beating estimates on revenue growth, with a 40% increase in Q1, the company’s stock fell 40% after the company reported a slowdown in supplier purchase commitments and lowered its full-year 2024 revenue outlook to about $8 million.
By going private in the Commure deal, the hope is that both companies can focus on their complementary core technologies and focus on serving their provider customers with improved clinical experiences.
“We believe that together we can dramatically increase the productivity of every physician in the United States by using language models to transcribe appointments, automatically code them, and drive back-office operations to billing teams,” said Commure CEO Tanay Tandon, who noted that the two companies are on track to complete more than 3 million physician appointments this year with AI-based ambient transcription and revenue cycle automation technology.
“Commure Scribe and Augmedix Go save physicians an average of two hours of transcription time per day, reducing transcription time by more than 80 percent and helping generate billions of dollars in productivity savings for providers nationwide,” he said. “In the coming months, we expect to announce more about how our combined product suites will help transform provider operations across all of the systems we partner with.”
Mike Miliard is executive editor of Healthcare IT News
Email the author: [email protected]
Healthcare IT News is a publication of HIMSS.
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