San Francisco-based Commure, which develops a suite of software programs designed to help healthcare organizations boost efficiencies, announced recently that it will acquire Augmedix, which makes ambient AI-enabled tools for clinical workflow and documentation.

The deal, which is valued at $139 million, will see Augmedix taken private and combined with Commure as a wholly-owned subsidiary.

Since its founding in 2012, Augmedix has worked to innovate approaches to automated medical scribing and clinical documentation. Its technologies serve more than 20 major health systems and hundreds of other sites of care.

With the acquisition, Augmedix stockholders will receive $2.35 per share in cash upon completion of the proposed transaction.

"As part of Commure, we believe Augmedix will be well-positioned to scale ambient documentation solutions to even more clinicians and health systems while simultaneously accelerating efforts to infuse more innovative features, integrations, and AI capabilities into our product suite," said Augmedix CEO Manny Krakaris in a statement.

"Commure is strongly aligned with Augmedix’s mission and vision for the future. We believe that the significant resources, deep industry expertise, and broadened technology capabilities we gain through this transaction will strengthen our market position, enable us to take advantage of more opportunities and create a powerful, future-focused company."

Augmedix started as a company specializing in developing clinical applications of Google Glass, and was soon scoring big funding from VC firms such as McKesson Ventures and others.

More recently, the company has been focused more broadly on AI-enabled tools to help ease clinical documentation burden, and embarked on projects with health systems such as HCA on hands-free charting and other initiatives.

But earlier this year, Augmedix's stock price dipped. Even though it beat estimates of its revenue growth, with a 40% increase in Q1, its shares dropped 40% after the company noted a slowdown in provider purchasing commitments, and it downgraded its 2024 full-year revenue outlook by about $8 million.

By going private in a deal with Commure, the hope is that both companies can focus on their complementary core technologies and focus on serving their provider customers with improved clinician experience.

"Together, we believe we can dramatically boost the productivity of every physician in America using language models that transcribe appointments, autonomously code them, and supercharge back-office operations for billing teams," said Commure CEO Tanay Tandon, who noted that the two companies are on track to enable more than three million physician appointments this year with AI-based ambient scribing and revenue-cycle automation this year.

"Commure Scribe, and Augmedix Go on average save a physician 2 hours of documentation time a day, reducing documentation time by more than 80%, and help generate billions of dollars in productivity savings for providers across the country," he said. "In the coming months, we hope to announce much more about how the combined company’s product suites will help transform provider operations at all the systems we partner with."

Mike Miliard is executive editor of Healthcare IT News
Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS publication.

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