- News article
Engram is building an AI-based health record system
While most electronic health record systems were built before the rise of AI, Engram is starting from scratch. With an experienced team of four and a clear ambition to build a system tailored for an AI-driven healthcare sector, they are entering a market dominated by established players.
Written by
Therese Oppegaard
📸 Remi Reksten
General practitioners and clinics today use electronic health record (EHR) systems that were largely developed for a different era. While individual AI-enabled tools have been added, they are typically layered on top of legacy architecture. Engram aims to take a different approach.
– We are seeing strong interest in implementing AI-based solutions in healthcare, but most EHR systems were built before the rapid advancement of AI and are not always compatible with the tools available today, says Ishita Barua, CEO and co-founder.
Barua is a physician, researcher and author, and a former co-founder and Chief Medical Officer at Livv Health. She now leads a team where technological expertise and medical insight are closely integrated, something she believes is essential for success in a highly regulated industry.
What Engram is building is not just a new transcription tool or an add-on to existing systems. They are developing a fully integrated EHR system where AI is embedded throughout the architecture, designed so that both clinicians and machine learning models can navigate and extract insights from the same structured data. In the long term, they also aim to make Engram an insight portal for patients.
– Everything we build is designed so that both humans and AI can easily navigate it. It comes down to structuring information in a way that makes it possible to extract insights more efficiently, while also enabling others to innovate on top of the platform, says Barua.
Ishita Barua and Dag-Inge Aas are leading the development of a new AI-based health record system for the healthcare sector 📸Engram
Part of a larger system
Engram is organised as a start-up within the health group Kernel, giving the company a stable foundation without compromising the pace of product development. CTO Dag-Inge Aas highlights the value of not starting from scratch alone.
– We have extensive experience working with AI and are well acquainted with the requirements of a highly regulated industry. At the same time, there is great value in sharing experience and drawing on expertise across the companies within the Kernel family, he says.
The target audience is general practitioners and specialist clinics – a deliberate choice that also aligns with Kernel’s portfolio. The largest company in the Kernel group, DIPS AS, delivers electronic health record systems to 86% of the hospital market in Norway.
Early member of the health cluster
Engram joined Norway Health Tech at an early stage.
– It was a natural choice for us. We already knew the ecosystem and understood the value it provides. There is no point in reinventing the wheel when there is already an established arena for collaboration, testing and learning, says Barua.
Through the cluster, Engram gains access to a broad network of stakeholders across healthcare services, industry and research environments, as well as experience and expertise related to implementation, regulation and scaling.
– For a small company like ours, it is crucial to be part of a larger community. It helps accelerate development while ensuring quality.
By combining internal resources within Kernel with the cluster ecosystem, the company is well positioned to move quickly into the market. The plan is to launch a solution soon that doctors can begin testing.
