Abridge will stay inside Department of Veterans Affairs clinics. The company’s ambient scribe is being carried into a new enterprise agreement reaching more than 75 medical centers. That vehicle is multi-award, with a $775.72M ceiling spread across five years and shared among vendors who can bid on task orders. Knowtex, the other pilot participant, was named as well.
The VA began testing ambient scribes in October 2025 with both companies. Access later widened to Patient Aligned Care Team primary care providers, behavioral health practitioners, physical medicine and rehabilitation staff, and medical and surgical specialists.
Ambient tools record the clinician-patient conversation with patient consent, then draft notes and orders for the clinician to review. Abridge says it is the only vendor currently integrating with both the VA’s legacy and incoming electronic health record systems – a claim that matters while the department works through a long EHR modernization program.
Chief executive Shiv Rao is a cardiologist who has treated patients at VA centers in Ann Arbor and Pittsburgh. He described the deployment as a trust exercise shaped by the scale and complexity of a nationwide rollout.
The contract signals that scribe technology has crossed from pilot to infrastructure at a federal health system, with cybersecurity and privacy compliance as gating requirements. It also sets a reference price point other large systems can weigh when negotiating their own deals.
The VA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the award.
