Voices of Healthcare · #3
Shiv Rao
Co-founder and CEO
Abridge
Shiv Rao is co-founder and chief executive of Abridge, and he is a cardiologist at UPMC in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Abridge records the exam-room conversation and drafts the note that goes into the electronic health record, a product he traces to the years he spent typing notes for his father, a Pittsburgh cardiologist who retired because he could not keep up with the chart.
Spending Five Years in India
He spent five years of his childhood in Hyderabad, India, after his father, a physician in Pittsburgh, moved the family there so he and his two older sisters would know their heritage. His father flew back from Pittsburgh about once a month. When the family returned, Rao finished high school in Pittsburgh, played drums and DJed, and studied history at Carnegie Mellon University before earning his medical degree at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in 2007.
Typing Notes for His Father
As a student he sat in his father's clinic at Mercy Hospital in downtown Pittsburgh and typed the visit notes. "I was writing this stuff for him because he couldn't figure out how to use the dictation technology," he said. "He retired literally because he couldn't type fast enough."
Moving from Cardiology to Venture
During a cardiology fellowship at UPMC, which he finished in 2013, he worked off hours at a startup and then became executive vice president at UPMC Enterprises, the health system's venture arm. There he funded a machine learning and health program that included Zachary Lipton, a Carnegie Mellon professor.
Founding Abridge
He and Lipton founded Abridge in Pittsburgh in 2018. The question behind it, he has said, is "what can we build that would have kept him still in practice?" In February 2024 the company announced Abridge Inside, which places the drafted note inside Epic's record so a health system does not retype the visit into a second system. He still sees patients as a cardiologist one week a month.
Weekends in Pittsburgh
He lives in Pittsburgh and commutes to San Francisco, California, most weeks. He visits his father every Sunday with his children, and on weekends he builds Pokémon websites with his twin sons.
Links
Also on HIR
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