Nabla

What is Nabla?

Nabla is an artificial intelligence-based clinical assistant that listens to medical consultations in real time and automatically generates structured clinical notes in the patient's electronic health record.

Founded in 2018 in France, Nabla's main mission is to reduce the administrative overload that keeps doctors away from what really matters: patient care. Instead of typing notes during or after each consultation, the doctor focuses on the conversation while the AI handles the documentation.

How it works

The workflow is simple:

1. The doctor opens Nabla before the consultation (via app or integration with the electronic health record).
2. The tool listens to the conversation between doctor and patient (with consent).
3. The AI transcribes, analyzes, and structures the information into clinical note format.
4. The doctor reviews and approves the note before saving it in the record.
5. The note is automatically inserted into the system (Epic, Cerner, Athenahealth, etc.).

The AI model was trained on specialized medical vocabulary, including clinical terminology, drug names, ICD diagnoses, and procedures.

Key features

• Ambient Clinical Intelligence: automatic transcription and structuring of consultations.
• SOAP Notes Generation: standard format (Subjective, Objective, Assessment, Plan) filled in automatically.
• EHR/EMR Integration: direct connection with leading electronic health records.
• Multilingual Support: available in English, French, and expanding to other languages.
• Review Mode: doctor sees the generated note and edits it before confirming.
• Privacy by Design: audio is not permanently stored; only the processed transcription is kept.
• Asynchronous Analysis: can process recordings of previous consultations.

Who is it for

• General practitioners and specialists with a high volume of daily consultations.
• Doctors in hospitals and clinics who use electronic health record systems.
• Telemedicine practitioners conducting video consultations.
• Health groups wanting to standardize the quality of clinical documentation.
• Doctors working with elderly patients with long and complex consultations.

Impact on medical practice

Studies and data published by Nabla show:

• 70% reduction in time spent on post-consultation documentation.
• Doctors can see more patients without increasing their working hours.
• Improvement in doctor satisfaction: less bureaucracy-related burnout.
• Clinical notes are more complete and standardized than those written manually under time pressure.

Real-world use cases

1. Follow-up Consultations: quickly record treatment evolution in chronic patients.
2. Emergency Room: document high-demand care without losing quality.
3. Telemedicine: automatically capture notes in video consultations.
4. Psychiatric and Mental Health Consultations: where active listening is essential and taking notes can harm the connection.
5. Pediatrics: consultations with multiple guardians speaking at the same time.

Electronic Health Record integrations

Nabla integrates with major healthcare systems:

• Epic (leader in US hospitals)
• Cerner / Oracle Health
• Athenahealth
• Elation Health
• Others via HL7/FHIR API

Privacy and compliance

Nabla was designed to meet the most stringent data protection regulations in healthcare:

• HIPAA (USA) — full compliance.
• GDPR (Europe) — French company with data processed in the EU.
• Consultation audio is not retained after processing.
• Explicit patient consent option before each consultation.

Pricing

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Real and measurable reduction in administrative burden.
• Increases the quality and completeness of notes.
• Simple interface, no long learning curve.
• Fully focused on healthcare (not an adaptation of a generic tool).

Cons:

• Transcription quality depends on environment (noise, accent).
• Still requires human review before saving.
• Limited coverage for medical vocabulary in Portuguese.
• Cost can be high for self-employed doctors in emerging markets.

Alternatives to Nabla

Suki AI, Nuance DAX (Microsoft), Abridge, and DeepScribe are direct competitors in the AI clinical documentation space.\n