Ara.so vs Generic Transcription APIs: Medical-Grade AI Differences
Off-the-shelf transcription APIs sound cheap, but they miss clinical nuance. Here's what a medical-grade scribe adds.
Commodity APIs lack context
They struggle with drug names, accent variance, and mid-sentence corrections. Engineers must bolt on their own vocab, data stores, and privacy controls.
Most services persist audio for model training, which is a non-starter for HIPAA workloads.
What a purpose-built scribe delivers
Ara layers domain-tuned speech models with structured extraction. Diagnoses, meds, problems, and to-dos appear in the UI instantly and sync to the chart. Our privacy boundary keeps media inside your tenant — nothing is retained for training.
Teams use our web app on day one and graduate to APIs once they want deeper integration.
- Medical lexicon tuned on multispecialty data.
- On-device redaction for PII before cloud processing if you prefer.
- Full audit logs to satisfy HIPAA and SOC 2 reviewers.
| Feature | Ara.so | Generic APIs |
|---|---|---|
| Accuracy | Medical-Grade | General Purpose |
| Security | HIPAA Compliant | Often uses data for training |
| Output | Structured SOAP | Raw Text |
| Integration | EHR Ready | Requires custom dev |
Financial comparison
Generic APIs look cheaper per minute until you calculate the internal engineering required. Ara bundles everything — capture, transcript, summarization, exports, and hosting — so operational cost is predictable.
Key takeaways
- Raw transcription solves only 20% of the problem.
- Ara.so handles capture, structure, and delivery inside a compliant boundary.
- Total cost drops when you factor in engineering, QA, and privacy requirements.