An AI scribe GP Australia patients meet in the room is already common. About 40 per cent of GPs were using one by late last year, almost double the 22 per cent RACGP recorded in 2024. None of those products sit on the TGA register. They don’t have to, while they only write the consult down.
Melbourne-built Heidi is the one that got there first. It now runs in about 2.8 million patient visits a week worldwide. On Tuesday night the company said it had raised US$340 million, about $476 million, to push past transcription and into AI agents that do work around the visit. Blackbird led a US$100 million Series C that values Heidi at US$900 million, or $1.26 billion. That is a unicorn. General Catalyst separately put in a US$240 million growth cheque.
The note-taker in the corner of the room is about to start talking about your medicines. That is the story.
How an AI scribe GP Australia clinic can use one without TGA approval
The TGA treats a digital scribe as a medical device when it diagnoses, predicts, treats, or otherwise takes on a therapeutic job. A box that listens and drafts a letter does not meet that test. Heidi’s current product lives on that side of the line. So do the other scribes in Australian rooms.
Sean Stevens chairs the RACGP’s digital health group and advises rival Lyrebird. He told the Herald the new Heidi features would probably need TGA oversight. Heidi is not planning to ship those capabilities in Britain or the EU. Co-founder Thomas Kelly pointed to the different rules. Australia has not drawn that harder line yet.
A TGA spokesman has said clinical AI that meets the medical-device definition must comply before it is supplied here. The agency’s 2024 AI review still called the existing framework “fit for purpose.” Clinics are already past the review.
What patients are agreeing to
Walk in and you may get a new question: do you consent to an AI transcription tool? In most states it is an offence to record a consult without that yes. Victoria, Queensland and the Northern Territory have narrower exceptions. The yes has to cover everyone in the room, including a parent or a student.
The draft note still belongs to the GP. RACGP guidance is blunt about that. The doctor stays on the hook for whatever goes into the file. Hallucinated symptoms, dropped allergies, a tidy sentence that was never said: those land on the clinician, not the vendor.
Health department briefing notes obtained earlier this year were less relaxed. Officials said scribes have “little oversight.” Some vendors market themselves as outside the medical-device rules. Some cloud setups send data offshore. A few advertise a 30 per cent revenue lift with no extra hours, which the department flagged as a Medicare problem.
Ask the AI scribe GP Australia practice whether the audio stays in the country. Ask if the practice has actually read the vendor’s privacy paper. Those are fair questions before you sit down.
What the money is for
Kelly’s line is that Heidi was never meant to stop at notes. The new raise funds two races at once: lock in hospitals while the scribe market is still open, then sell the heavier agents on top. Heidi says it is already in The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, Children’s Health Queensland and Metro South. It reported US$50 million in annual recurring revenue in April, up from US$1 million two years earlier.
Agents that counsel on medicines, draft care steps the GP did not speak, or steer a follow-up sit in a different legal box to a transcript. That is the crossing Stevens is pointing at. Once the software starts interpreting the visit, the ARTG listing stops being optional.
The bit that should worry the room
GPs like the time back. Burnout studies on ambient scribes keep showing shorter after-hours notes. Patients like a doctor who looks at them instead of the keyboard. Those gains are real.
The risk sits in the next product, not the current one. A scribe that mishears “no penicillin” is a bad note. An agent that then chats about antibiotics is a clinical act. Australia let the first wave in because it was paperwork. Heidi just raised half a billion dollars to leave paperwork behind.
If you are the patient, the useful move is still small. Ask if the scribe is on. Ask what it will do with the recording. If the tool starts offering advice the GP did not give, that is the moment the regulator said it would care.
