BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
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.
New episodes every week. Subscribe so you never miss one.
Listen & Subscribe
YouTube (English), YouTube (Bahasa Indonesia), Spotify (English), Spotify (Bahasa Indonesia), Spotify (Chinese), Spotify (Vietnamese), Apple Podcasts
Follow BRAVE
LinkedIn, X (Twitter), Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp
Follow Jeremy Au
LinkedIn, X / Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Threads, Twitch
Resources
Get transcripts, startup resources & community discussions at www.bravesea.com
#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