Heidi signs Samsung Medical Centre deal to enter South Korea

Australian healthcare AI company Heidi has signed a memorandum of understanding with Samsung Medical Centre, making the Seoul hospital its first partner in South Korea. The deal, announced on 13 November 2026, anchors Heidi's entry into one of Asia's most digitised healthcare markets with a hospital that Newsweek recently ranked fourth globally in its World's Best Smart Hospitals 2027 rankings.

The agreement covers development of a Korean-ready version of the Heidi platform, with Samsung Medical Centre serving as the first site where the system will be tested against Korean clinical, technical and regulatory requirements. The stakes are considerable for both sides. For Heidi, the partnership converts USD $340 million in recent funding into a concrete international beachhead. For Samsung Medical Centre, it extends a digital health programme that has already earned the highest certification levels from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society.

What will actually be deployed?

Under the arrangement, Samsung Medical Centre will test Heidi's clinical documentation tools within its electronic medical record system. The work includes a proof of concept using Heidi's on-premise deployment, running the software inside the hospital's own infrastructure rather than in the cloud.

The deployment is expected to integrate with DARWIN, the hospital's electronic medical record platform. It will be built on HL7 FHIR, a standard for exchanging health information between systems. The two organisations will assess the system against three criteria:

• technical performance
• physician acceptance
• documentation quality

That evaluation structure matters. Physician acceptance has become the decisive variable for ambient documentation tools (AI systems that listen to clinical consultations and generate notes automatically), and a hospital with Samsung Medical Centre's digital maturity gives Heidi a demanding test environment.

Building Korean-specific standards

The partnership goes beyond a single software trial. It includes joint work on three localisation artefacts:

• a Korean Clinical Documentation Standard
• a Korean FHIR Implementation Guide (a rulebook for how the FHIR data-exchange standard should be applied in a specific country)
• a Heidi Korea Reference Architecture

If the proof of concept succeeds, Samsung Medical Centre is expected to act as a reference site for future Heidi deployments across other healthcare organisations in South Korea. That positions the hospital as a distribution gateway, not merely a customer. In markets where hospital procurement follows peer validation, a positive reference from the country's top-ranked smart hospital carries commercial weight.

Who is Heidi?

Heidi was founded in Melbourne in 2019. The company says its software is now used in more than 3 million patient consultations a week, across 190 countries and 110 languages. Its product line focuses on AI tools for clinical documentation and workflow support, including ambient transcription, documentation templates and medical research access for clinicians.

The South Korean partnership is a further step in the company's international expansion following a fundraising streak that totals USD $340 million. The raises comprise:

• a USD $100 million Series C led by Blackbird
• a USD $240 million growth investment from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund

The General Catalyst commitment came through its Customer Value Fund, a financing vehicle tied to customer revenue rather than traditional equity rounds, a signal that Heidi's expansion is being underwritten by measured commercial traction.

Why Samsung Medical Centre?

Samsung Medical Centre is one of South Korea's best-known hospitals and has invested heavily in digital systems. Beyond its fourth place in Newsweek's World's Best Smart Hospitals 2027 rankings, where it ranked first in South Korea, the hospital holds Stage 7 certification — the highest level awarded by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society — across four maturity models covering infrastructure, electronic medical records, digital imaging and analytics.

The hospital said it was the first healthcare institution in the world to reach Stage 7 in the Infrastructure Adoption Model in 2022, and the first in the Digital Imaging Adoption Model in 2023. That record makes it an exacting first customer: a hospital already operating at the ceiling of recognised digital maturity has little patience for tools that do not fit its workflows.

What did the executives say?

Thomas Kelly, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Heidi, framed the deal as the foundation of the company's Korean market entry.

"Samsung Medical Centre represents Heidi's first collaboration in South Korea and will serve as a key partner as we expand into the Korean healthcare market," Kelly said. "Korean clinicians are among the most skilled in the world, and they manage patient volumes few of their peers elsewhere would recognise. Every minute spent on documentation comes out of time with patients. Working with SMC lets us build Heidi around the way medicine is practised in Korea, from its documentation standards to the hospital systems clinicians use every day, so the time we give back goes to patient care."

Samsung Medical Centre framed the agreement as part of its broader digital healthcare strategy.

"We expect this collaboration with Heidi to further accelerate our efforts to create a more patient-centered AI-powered healthcare environment," said Professor Seung Woo Park, President and Chief Executive Officer of Samsung Medical Centre. "This partnership will mark another important milestone for SMC as we continue to shape the future of smart hospitals by bringing the next generation of healthcare to life."

What happens next?

The immediate deliverable is the proof of concept: Heidi's on-premise documentation tools running inside Samsung Medical Centre's infrastructure, integrated with DARWIN over FHIR. The evaluation criteria — technical performance, physician acceptance and documentation quality — will determine whether the hospital becomes the reference site for wider Korean adoption.

The broader significance lies in the standards work. A Korean Clinical Documentation Standard and a Korean FHIR Implementation Guide, if completed and adopted, would lower the integration barrier for every subsequent deployment in the country. Kelly's stated goal of returning clinician time to patient care now has a named hospital, a named architecture and a measurable test in front of it.