Ara.so vs DIY AI Scribes: Build vs Buy for Health Systems
Some IT teams try to stitch together their own AI scribe from open models. We break down the hidden work.
DIY scope creep
Teams start with a transcription API plus a summarization model. Soon they need ambient capture apps, offline queues, encryption tooling, redaction, reviewer dashboards, billing integration, and multilingual support.
Each addition spawns new tickets and on-call rotations.
Managed AI scribes accelerate delivery
Ara exposes a UI for clinicians and APIs for your engineers. We handle releases, speech model tuning, and compliance controls. You still own your data, export transcripts whenever you want, and even host inside your cloud if required.
Instead of twelve parallel workstreams, you configure templates and measure adoption.
- Saves 6-9 months of engineering time.
- Security reviews finish faster thanks to existing attestations.
- Product teams can still build proprietary logic on top of Ara's structured output.
| Feature | Ara.so | DIY Build |
|---|---|---|
| Time to Market | Immediate | 6-12 Months |
| Maintenance | Included | Internal Team Required |
| Compliance | Certified | Self-Managed Risk |
| Cost | Predictable | Unbounded (Dev time) |
Governance
Buying does not mean giving up control. Ara ships with audit logs, retention toggles, and deployment choices (fully managed or self-hosted). You keep architectural ownership without reinventing the wheel.
Key takeaways
- DIY scribes balloon into multi-quarter projects.
- Ara.so ships the capture, AI, and delivery layers so IT stays focused.
- You can still self-host if architecture control is non-negotiable.