Gosta Labs Cuts Documentation Burden for Healthcare Professionals with AI
Europe’s healthcare systems are under increasing strain due to aging populations and staff shortages. To maintain quality care, healthcare providers need solutions that streamline workflows and allow professionals to focus on patients. Finnish startup Gosta Labs is addressing these challenges by developing AI-driven tools aimed at reducing administrative workload and improving care delivery.
In Finland, physicians can spend up to half their workday on paperwork such as patient record documentation. Automating this process can free valuable time for direct patient interaction. Founders Henri Viertolahti and Lauri Sippola bring over a decade of experience in health technology. They previously developed Kaiku Health, an app that automates symptom monitoring for cancer patients and has been adopted worldwide. After Kaiku Health was acquired by Elekta in 2020, they saw an opportunity in 2023 to leverage advances in large language models to tackle healthcare’s administrative challenges.
Addressing Compliance and Security with Microsoft Azure
Using AI in healthcare documentation involves strict regulatory and privacy requirements including GDPR, medical device laws, and the EU AI Act. Gosta Labs chose Microsoft Azure as their cloud platform because of its strong security features and compliance certifications. Azure’s widespread use in Finnish healthcare and its easy integration with existing systems made it a practical choice.
Azure Machine Learning Studio and the EU Data Boundary model support rapid development while ensuring data sovereignty. This foundation helps Gosta Labs meet both technical and legal demands in healthcare environments.
AI Assistant Pilot Shows Promising Results
The core product from Gosta Labs is an AI assistant that listens during patient consultations and generates structured medical records compliant with local standards, like those from the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL). Physicians review and finalize these records, drastically cutting documentation time.
The service was piloted in summer 2024 at a health center in Nummela, Finland. Early feedback highlighted better focus on patient care, improved patient interactions, reduced paperwork, and higher job satisfaction among clinicians. Following this success, the pilot expanded to three additional centers in the Western Uusimaa region. Plans are underway to implement the solution across various public and private healthcare providers in Finland and Europe.
Support from the Microsoft for Startups program has been key to Gosta Labs’ growth, providing access to global experts with deep healthcare knowledge and technical resources.
Looking Ahead: Beyond Record-Keeping
Gosta Labs is developing its AI assistant further to provide real-time clinical decision support during consultations. They are also creating proprietary language models using LUMI, Europe’s most powerful supercomputer.
The company is active in research, with initial scientific findings on using large language models to interpret lung cancer guidelines presented at the 2024 ASCO Annual Meeting. Future plans include international expansion and certification of their technology as a medical device.
These efforts aim to ease professional workloads and improve treatment quality globally, building on Gosta Labs’ existing expertise and understanding of healthcare needs.
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