Building the World's Most-used Medical AI | Dr. Thomas Kelly of Heidi - E716

Dr. Thomas Kelly was a vascular surgery trainee in Melbourne before he walked away from medicine to fix the problem he hated most: paperwork stealing time from patients. Today he is co-founder and CEO of Heidi Health, an AI medical scribe and "care partner" used by clinicians in more than 100 countries, valued at US$465M after its 2025 Series B led by Point72.

In this episode, Jeremy Au and Dr. Tom break down how GPT-4 nearly destroyed the company, forcing a brutal pivot from an AI model company into a product company, and how that near-death moment led to becoming one of the world's most-used healthcare AI tools. They dig into why great AI scribing is far harder than a demo, how Heidi is expanding into clinical decision support and medical-device territory, why he isn't scared of OpenAI in healthcare, and why Singapore, Japan, and the rest of Asia are core to the roadmap.

A must-watch for founders, venture capitalists, and operators building AI, health tech, and vertical software across Southeast Asia.

Watch, listen or read the full insight at https://www.bravesea.com/blog/heidi-health-tom-kelly

BRAVE is Southeast Asia's leading tech podcast, hosted by Jeremy Au. Honest conversations with the region's top founders, investors, and operators on building startups in Southeast Asia.

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#HealthcareAI #AIScribe #FounderStory #AIinHealthcare #StartupPivot #SoutheastAsia #VentureCapital

00:00 – From vascular surgery to AI: meet Dr. Tom Kelly

01:38 – Why he became a doctor: the "platonic ideal" GP

02:55 – Maths, machine learning, and the pre-med detour

04:22 – GAMSAT YouTube videos to his first business

07:06 – Building Oscer, an early AI clinical tutor

08:58 – Why doctor paperwork is a capacity crisis

13:05 – Is an AI scribe easy or hard to build?

17:35 – From scribe to full AI care partner

18:28 – Clinical AI and medical device regulation

21:32 – Roadmap: tasks, primitives, and on-prem hardware

26:24 – Going global: Singapore, Japan, and Asia

28:50 – Localizing for Malay, Hokkien, and Singlish

32:52 – Why clinicians drive the innovation

34:21 – The GPT-4 pivot that nearly ended Heidi

37:20 – Competing with OpenAI and how to run a pivot