Health-care artificial intelligence startup Suki on Wednesday announced a new collaboration with Google Cloud as part of its push to expand beyond clinical documentation. 

Through the partnership, Suki is building patient summary and Q&A features using Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform, which allows developers to train, tune and deploy different AI models and applications. 

Suki’s flagship product, called Suki Assistant, allows doctors to record their visits with patients and automatically turn them into clinical notes, helping physicians avoid the headache of manually writing out all of that information.

The new features with Google Cloud will allow Suki to provide clinicians with more assistive tech as they provide care to patients, the startup said. 

It is the next frontier for the seven-year-old company. 

“We were never really building a clinical documentation tool only, it was supposed to be an assistant,” Punit Soni, the founder and CEO of Suki, told CNBC. “An assistant can help you with documentation, but it can also start doing other things.”

Doctors will be able to use Suki’s platform, for instance, to quickly ask questions and pull up relevant information about a patient’s medical history, said Soni, who previously spent several years as an employee at Google.

Suki’s new summary feature will allow clinicians to read up on a patient’s basic biographical information, visit history and reason for coming in with just one click. The summary shows details such as the patient’s age, chronic conditions, past prescriptions and other problems, such as “low back pain.” 

Pulling together all of that data automatically could help save doctors the 15 to 30 minutes they spend each time they search for it themselves, Soni said.

If clinicians have more specific questions about a patient, they can click Suki’s Q&A button to type in their queries. They can submit prompts such as, “Show me his A1C over the last three months as a graph,” “What vaccines did the patient take?” or “When was his last electrocardiogram?”

Suki’s patient summarization feature is available to a select group of clinicians starting Wednesday, with general availability coming early next year, the company said. The new Q&A feature will also be generally available early next year.

The initial version of Suki’s Q&A feature will be equipped to answer questions based on individual patient data, but the company said it plans to broaden the scope eventually. Suki’s summarization and Q&A features will not come at an additional cost to its customers.

“To me, this is actually a larger trend of the AI design, or AI-ification, of health care,” Soni said. 

Suki’s technology is used by 350 health systems and clinics in the U.S., and the startup tripled its client base this year, the company said. The company’s new offerings could help it stand out within a fiercely competitive market. 

Administrative workloads are a major cause of burnout for health-care workers across the U.S., which means executives in the industry are eager for solutions. Clinicians spend nearly 28 hours a week on administrative tasks, including almost nine hours on documentation alone, according to a study published by Google Cloud in October. 

As a result, documentation tools that claim to help reduce these workloads, such as Suki’s, have exploded in popularity this year, and investors are paying attention. 

Suki closed a $70 million funding round in October, and rival startup Abridge announced a $150 million funding round in February. Microsoft’s subsidiary Nuance Communications, which Microsoft acquired for $16 billion in 2021, also offers a popular AI documentation tool for doctors.  

“Just like the internet happened, AI is also happening now,” Soni said. 

English rent prices have reached another record high, growing by close to 10% in the past year, official figures show.

The typical private rental price in England rose 9.3% in the year up to November, costing £116 more than 12 months earlier, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

English renters paid an average of £1,362 last month – a steep increase from the 8.8% hike seen a month earlier.

UK rent rises were not far behind, growing 9.1% across the year, just below the record-high annual rise of 9.2% in March.

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Londoners saw the biggest rent raises. In the capital, rent bills were up 11.6%, bypassing the previous record high.

Cheaper housing could be found in Scotland and Wales during the period. Their mean monthly rents were £980, up 6.5% and £772, 8.0% higher respectively.

Data for Northern Ireland is only available up to September, during which period rents rose 9%.

Analysis by Sky News found most people in the UK were renters and mortgage holders were in the minority.

Rent increasing disproportionately

Rent increases far surpass house price rises, mortgage rates and the overall rate of inflation.

People remortgaging at the end of November could secure a typical five-year fixed deal for 5.28% or a two-year fixed deal for 5.52%.

Meanwhile, the consumer price index measure of inflation stood at 2.6%.

Also published on Wednesday were average house prices, which were far below rent increases.

Average UK house prices rose 3.4% in the year to October 2024. In England, house prices are up 3%, in Wales 4% and in Scotland 5.5%, the ONS said.

Why are prices rising?

The increase comes due to there being more renters than rental properties available, the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA) said.

“The biggest pressure on rents remains a chronic shortage of housing to meet demand,” NLRA’s policy director Chris Norris said.

“According to Savills up to one million new homes to rent will be needed by 2031 to meet growing demand. Despite this, government data shows that one in three landlords are now planning to sell properties they rent out over the next two years.”

London Renters Union has been contacted for comment.

A criminology student has been found guilty of the murder and attempted murder of two women on a beach in Bournemouth.

Nasen Saadi, 20, from Croydon, fatally stabbed personal trainer Amie Gray, 34, ten times as she sat beside a fire on Durley Chine Beach in Dorset on the evening of 24 May.

Her friend Leanne Miles, who was sitting next to her on the beach, suffered 20 knife injuries but survived the attack.

The trial at Winchester Crown Court heard how Saadi, who was studying criminology at Greenwich University in London, was asked by one of his lecturers: “You’re not planning a murder, are you?”

He had asked teachers questions about self-defence for murder and how long DNA stays behind.

Saadi told detectives he had an interest in true crime, unsolved cases and horror movies.

During the trial, the jury heard how in the days leading up to the attack Saadi had checked into a Travelodge in Bournemouth before moving to a different hotel.

He went to a cinema to watch The Strangers – Chapter 1, described by the prosecution as a slasher movie where the male and female leads both get stabbed.

Lead prosecutor Sarah Jones KC said: “It suggests, doesn’t it, that the defendant gravitated to what he likes to watch or sought inspiration or encouragement from what he saw.”

The jury was shown CCTV footage which the prosecution said showed Saadi walking along the beach promenade.

A CCTV audio recording was also played for the jury of screaming and a male voice at around 11.39pm – the time of the attack.

Ms Jones told the jury Saadi left the victims on the sand “to bleed to death” while he moved away and tried to disappear “back into the shadows”.

‘I am getting dizzy, please hurry up’

A recording of a 999 call made by Ms Miles was played to the court in which she was heard crying in pain.

The 39-year-old told the operator: “I have been stabbed loads of times. Oh my God, I am getting dizzy, please hurry up, please hurry up.”

She continues: “I am bleeding everywhere, I have been stabbed loads of times.”

The clothes Saadi was wearing during the attack and the weapon used were never recovered.

Analysis of Saadi’s laptop showed that since January 2024 there were searches about murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler and her killer Levi Bellfield, as well as Brianna Ghey and her killers.

There were also multiple visits to websites selling knives and searches for “why do criminals get away with crimes in rural areas” and “why is it harder for a criminal to get caught if he does it in another town”.

During searches of his bedroom at his aunt’s home where he was living, police found five knives, including a machete and an ornamental knife, as well as a self-defence spray.

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Officers also seized a blue Trespass rucksack which contained white latex gloves, two of which were inside out, a black balaclava, a torch and used wet wipes.

In a police interview shown in court, Saadi said: “I am not responsible and I have no reason to attack someone for no reason.”

Asked where he was at the time of the attack, he replied “no comment” and when asked if he was the person in the CCTV footage, he replied: “Beaches are popular places… many people… CCTV shows there were many people walking, it’s not just one person.”

Saadi, who had pleaded guilty to failing to provide his mobile phone code to police, did not give evidence during the trial.