Every few weeks a clinician asks me the same thing: is the Aussie AI scribe everyone is talking about actually worth it, and can I trust it with patient data? Here is my honest read on Heidi.
Heidi AI is an ambient medical scribe that listens to a consultation and drafts the clinical note for you, it is genuinely good at that core job, and for Australian clinicians it is a defensible choice on privacy, but it is not flawless and you remain responsible for every word it writes.
I spend my days helping organisations put AI to work without setting fire to their compliance obligations. Healthcare is the hardest version of that problem, because the data is sensitive, the stakes are clinical, and the regulator does not accept “the AI did it” as a defence. So when a homegrown Melbourne product starts showing up in GP clinics, hospitals and allied health practices across the country, I pay attention. Here is what Heidi is, where it came from, what it costs, and where I would be cautious.
What is Heidi AI?
Heidi AI is an ambient clinical documentation tool: it records a patient consultation, transcribes it, and turns the conversation into a structured clinical note, letter or summary in seconds.
The category is usually called an “AI medical scribe” or “ambient scribe”. Instead of a clinician typing notes during or after an appointment, the software listens in the background (with patient consent), captures the dialogue, and produces documentation formatted the way that clinician wants it. Think consult notes, referral letters, case histories and discharge summaries drafted automatically while the doctor stays present with the patient.
Heidi has since grown beyond pure note-taking. It now bundles a research feature called Evidence, which surfaces trusted medical sources at the point of care, and a communications layer for patient follow-up. In early 2026 it even launched its first hardware device. But the beating heart of the product, and the reason people adopt it, is still the ambient scribe.
If you want the wider view of where tools like this sit in the market, I keep a running comparison in my best AI tools for Australian business in 2026 guide. Heidi is a specialist where those are generalists.
The Melbourne origin story worth knowing
Heidi is an Australian success story: founded in Melbourne by a burnt-out surgical trainee, it is now valued at 465 million US dollars and used in more than 110 countries.
This part I genuinely enjoy. Heidi was founded by Dr Thomas Kelly, a Melbourne-raised vascular surgery trainee who was working at The Alfred before he walked away from medicine in 2021 under what he has described as crushing burnout. As CNBC reported, Kelly built the company with co-founders Waleed Mussa and Yu Liu, evolving an earlier medical training chatbot called Oscer into the scribe we know today.
The trajectory since has been steep. In October 2025 Heidi closed a 65 million US dollar Series B led by Steve Cohen’s Point72 Private Investments, valuing the company at 465 million US dollars and taking total funding to nearly 100 million. In February 2026 it acquired UK clinical AI firm AutoMedica to push deeper into Europe. For a product born out of an Australian hospital ward, that is a serious outcome, and I think it is fair to note it with a bit of local pride.
What can Heidi actually do?
The feature set is more mature than most rivals. Here is what matters day to day:
- Ambient note-taking. Record a consult in person or over telehealth and get a structured note back in seconds.
- Templates. Extensive customisation so the output matches your specialty, your format and your house style.
- Documents beyond the note. Referral letters, care plans, summaries and patient-facing instructions generated from the same session.
- Evidence. Point-of-care access to vetted medical research, including premium sources on higher tiers.
- Dictation and Ask Heidi. Voice dictation plus prompt-driven editing to refine what the scribe produces.
- Multilingual capture. Support across a very wide range of languages, useful in Australia’s multicultural clinics.
How much does Heidi Health cost?
Heidi offers a genuine free tier, then paid plans that climbed noticeably in 2026, with the flagship Clinician plan now around 150 US dollars per user each month.
Heidi restructured its pricing in early 2026, and the top plan roughly doubled from its previous annual rate. Prices are generally quoted in US dollars even for Australian users, so budget with the exchange rate in mind. Here is the current shape of it.
| Plan | Rough price (USD) | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/mo | Students, residents, light users. Unlimited basic consults and dictation, plus 10 Pro Actions per month |
| Evidence Plus | ~$40/user/mo | Clinicians who want premium research sources (BMJ, NICE) alongside scribing |
| Clinician | Full-time clinicians wanting the complete scribe feature set | |
| Practice | ~$99/user/seat | Practices needing EHR integrations across a team |
| Enterprise | Custom | Hospitals and large networks, quoted case by case |
The free plan is real and useful, but the catch is the 10 Pro Actions per month cap. Custom templates and the smarter AI features draw down that allowance, and heavy users burn through it fast, at which point the advanced features lock until the next billing cycle. It is a fair funnel: free for students, paid for anyone using it seriously. A 14-day trial covers the paid tiers.
My honest take: at 150 US dollars a seat, the Clinician plan is now priced at the premium end of the market. It can absolutely pay for itself in reclaimed time, but the days of Heidi being the obvious cheap pick are over.
Is Heidi AI safe for patient data?
On paper Heidi’s privacy posture is strong: it is built around the Australian Privacy Principles, holds ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certifications, encrypts data in transit and at rest, and keeps Australian patient information onshore.
This is the question that actually decides whether a clinician should touch the product, and it is the same lens I apply to every AI tool. According to Heidi’s own compliance documentation, the company aligns with the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) under the Privacy Act, processes health information solely to generate the clinical documentation, and states that Australian patient data stays in Australia. It carries ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certification, uses encryption at rest and in transit, and says it does not sell data to third parties.
That is a credible baseline, and better than a lot of overseas tools that quietly process data offshore. But safe is not the same as hands-off, and I want to be blunt about three things:
- Consent is still your job. The Privacy Act and your professional obligations require you to inform patients and obtain consent before recording. The tool does not do that for you.
- You own the record. Heidi drafts, you verify and sign. A hallucinated medication or a dropped detail is your medico-legal problem, not the vendor’s.
- Certifications describe controls, not outcomes. ISO 27001 tells you the security management is audited. It does not guarantee a session will never drop.
I have written before about why data residency and independent certification matter so much once AI touches sensitive information, in the context of the Five Eyes joint statement on AI security. The same discipline applies here. And if you want my full framework for interrogating any health or finance AI vendor before you trust it, I laid it out in my honest review of Silvia AI. Heidi answers most of those questions well.
How widely is Heidi actually used?
Adoption is enormous and still growing: Heidi supports over two million consultations every week across more than 116 countries and 200-plus specialties.
The traction is not hype. Heidi reports tens of thousands of clinicians using the platform for more than two million consults a week, in over 110 languages. In the UK, reporting has credited the tool with returning around four million hours of clinician time from NHS paperwork back to patient care. When a product reaches that scale in clinical settings, it has cleared real procurement and governance hurdles, not just marketing ones.
The honest limitations
Heidi is good, but 2026 has exposed real reliability complaints, and its own research flags hallucination as clinicians’ top concern.
This is where a review earns its keep. A few things you should weigh:
- Reliability wobbles. Through 2026 the recurring complaint has been lost recordings and dropped sessions. Heidi’s Trustpilot score has slipped, and some clinicians report losing several sessions a week, dictation failing a portion of the time, and medication names transcribed incorrectly.
- Hallucination risk. In Heidi’s own 2026 Pressure Points research, clinicians named accuracy and hallucination as their single biggest technical worry with clinical AI. That is the vendor’s own data, and it is the right thing to worry about.
- Multi-problem consults. Accuracy is noticeably stronger on single-issue visits than on messy, multi-problem appointments.
- Support responsiveness. Slow customer support is a common thread in recent reviews, which stings more when a session has just vanished.
- Price creep. As covered above, the flagship plan is now genuinely expensive.
None of this makes Heidi a bad product. It makes it a tool that needs a human in the loop, a habit of checking every note before it is signed, and a fallback plan for the day a recording drops.
The verdict
Heidi AI is one of the best ambient medical scribes available to Australian clinicians in 2026, and its privacy posture is a real strength, but treat it as a fast drafting assistant that always needs your review, not an autopilot.
Here is how I would leave it:
- If you are a solo clinician or student, start on the free tier and see whether the time saved is real for your workflow before you commit to a paid seat.
- If you are a busy full-time clinician, the Clinician plan can pay for itself in reclaimed hours, provided you build a firm habit of checking every note.
- If you are a practice or hospital, the compliance story is strong enough to take to your governance committee, but write the reliability fallback and the consent process into your policy, and pilot before you roll out widely.
Heidi is a genuine Australian achievement, and for the core job of turning a conversation into a clean clinical note it is excellent. Just remember the rule that applies to every clinical AI tool: it drafts, you decide, you sign.
I help Australian organisations adopt AI without breaking their compliance obligations. If you are weighing up a clinical or enterprise AI tool and want a straight second opinion, get in touch.