Notable Health Inc., a startup backed by a group of institutional investors that includes Greylock Partners, today launched a specialized voice assistant aimed at allowing physicians to spend more time with their patients.

The service does so by automating the administrative chores involved in day-to-day medical work. One recent survey showed that most doctors spend over 10 hours a week on such tasks, time that Notable hopes to put to better use.

One of the main ways the startup’s assistant can alleviate the load on physicians is by reducing the need for manual note-taking. The service, which is designed to run on the Apple Watch, records patient conversations and provides the ability to have important details automatically added to the appropriate electronic health record. It also enables doctors to dictate comments when extra context is needed.

In addition to saving time, Notable said, the assistant can lower the risk of data entry errors. That’s because physicians are often in a hurry and don’t always have time to recheck every detail when they’re manually inputting information into their patient management software.

Another area where Notable’s assistant aims to streamline operations is order management. The service enables doctors to put in requests for lab tests, handle prescriptions and even refer a patient to another practitioner with spoken commands. The artificial intelligence models under the hood handle some of the billing process, too, according to the startup.

Taking everything into account, Notable claims that the service can free up as much as 60 percent of the time physicians spend on administrative work. The startup says that early adopters are already using it to manage thousands of patient visits every month.

The healthcare sector is among a growing list of areas where voice assistants are starting to find use. Adoption is growing so fast that SoundHound Inc., one of the top providers of software for creating conversational bots, recently raised $100 million in funding from investors. The startup is backed by major players from the auto, electronics and semiconductor industries, to name a few.

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