TORTUS vs Heidi, and why wai runs the whole clinic

Where wai is ahead of both

A scribe writes the note. wai runs the clinic. From one consultation, in the room or on video, wai drafts the note, the referral and clinic letters, prescriptions, result explanations, the coding and cited answers for the clinician to sign. On their own pages, read 24 October 2026, TORTUS lists no cited answers, and neither TORTUS nor Heidi lists phone answering for a clinic's front desk, online booking or payments.

The front desk on the same record. Calls, email, web forms and WhatsApp land in one thread per patient with replies drafted for approval. Patients request appointments through links that read each doctor's calendar, cancellations backfill from the waitlist, and deposits and invoices run through the clinic's own Stripe.

Built for private practice. wai began inside The Wellness, a private clinic in London, and runs its diary, front desk, records, notes, payments and follow-up every day, with published prices a clinic can read before a demo.

What the two pages say, side by side

The table reads each product from its own site on one day. TORTUS publishes no price, NHS trusts request a demo and GPs reach it through X-on Surgery Connect, and it names Epic, EMIS, TPP SystmOne, Oracle Health, Access Rio and Medicus among its record systems. Heidi publishes UK prices and lists record connections as an add-on on its Practice and Enterprise plans.

Both are built around the note in the NHS record estate. A private clinic's day runs on more than the note, and the TORTUS comparison and the Heidi comparison set each one beside wai row by row. The UK scribe roundup covers the rest of the field.

The evidence behind wai's method

The note is one part of the day the evidence measures. In a randomised trial of 238 outpatient physicians across 14 specialties at UCLA Health, the ambient scribe with a significant effect cut the time spent writing each note by about 41 seconds, against 18 seconds in usual care.¹ At The Permanente Medical Group, 3,442 physicians used an ambient scribe across 303,266 encounters in its first ten weeks, and reported more personal conversations with patients and less clerical work after hours.² wai is built on that finding, so it takes on the letters, the replies, the booking and the follow-up as well as the note.

A draft stays a draft until a person signs it. Article 14 of the EU AI Act requires high-risk AI systems to be designed so that people can oversee them effectively,³ and in the UK the MHRA and NHS England publish guidance on ambient voice technology in health and care.⁴⁵ wai holds every draft until the doctor signs it, and every reply until a person at the clinic sends it.

The patient's own language. In a systematic review of 33 studies, 76% found at least one outcome better when patient and physician shared a language other than English.⁶ wai works in 60 languages, so the consultation can happen in the patient's own and the signed note is still written for the record.

Measured in a working clinic. At The Wellness in London, which runs on wai every day, every clinician has 15 hours a week back, as published in the customer story.⁷

Moving to wai

Start with one clinician, alongside what you use today. Request a demo and bring one real consultation. In fifteen minutes you see the note, the letter and the codes it produces, on your own workflow.

Nothing has to be switched off on the first day. wai connects to Google, Outlook and Apple calendars, and signed notes and letters export to the record you already keep, so TORTUS or Heidi can run in parallel while you compare. The guide to switching scribe without losing records covers the order of steps.

Then a 90 day pilot shaped around your team, which ends with three numbers from your own clinic, revenue, hours saved and patients cared for. The decision is then made on your data, not ours.

What it costs

wai publishes its prices. Clinician Plus is $550 a clinician a month, with bespoke templates, a records sync and a larger allowance, and Clinician is $350, with the note, letters, coding and cited answers from every consultation. Admin, the front desk, is priced per location after a demo.

Each price, or the absence of one, as its own page showed it on 24 October 2026, is in the first row of the table with its source. Set the seat against what it replaces. An hour of a clinician's evening, a letter that waits a day, a call that goes to voicemail and a patient who requests an appointment elsewhere each cost more than the line on the invoice. The AI scribe for UK clinics page has the whole product, and wai compared lists every comparison.

Frequently asked questions