Abstractive Health vs MedScrub (2026)
Both handle patient records with AI, and they come at the privacy problem from opposite sides. Abstractive Health retrieves a patient's outside records through the national exchange networks as a Carequality implementer, normalizes CCDA, FHIR, PDF and scanned documents into one record, and summarizes it with every sentence linked to the source note. Its price is published, with a free tier, and its business associate agreement is part of its terms. MedScrub strips the patient out of records before any model sees them. A proxy removes all eighteen HIPAA identifiers, sends the de identified content to whichever model the customer chooses, from GPT-4 and Claude to local models under Ollama, and restores identity in the answer on the way back. If your failure mode is clinicians missing what sits in outside records, start with Abstractive Health. If it is identifiable data reaching a third party model, start with MedScrub.
- It retrieves outside records through the national exchange networks, searching around a patient's current and prior addresses, and keeps the original files downloadable.
- Every summary sentence links to its source note, and clinicians can ask questions with cited answers and set chart alerts in plain language, through a web app, SMART on FHIR app, Chrome extension or API.
- Pricing runs from a free clinician account to $99 per user per month for up to five users, and the company names a SOC 2 Type II attestation, AWS hosting and annual penetration testing.
- A proxy strips all eighteen HIPAA identifiers before content reaches any model, and the substitution is reversible, so identity returns in the answer.
- The customer picks the model, with GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, Mistral and local models under Ollama named, and the proxy is sold as an HTTP API and an MCP server, self hosted or in the cloud.
- Patient data syncs from the EHR into a clinical data repository the customer owns, so with self hosting and a local model the whole path can stay on infrastructure the customer controls.
This comparison is published by AI Health Index, an independent research platform that compares healthcare AI vendors objectively. Abstractive Health and MedScrub are each graded against the same capability taxonomy, from each vendor's own public materials and the regulatory record, under the AI Health Index verification standard. No vendor pays for placement, and no vendor has reviewed this page. How this evidence is graded
Plain facts
| Fact | Abstractive Health | MedScrub |
|---|---|---|
| Primary category | Clinical Summarization & Chart Review | Clinical Summarization & Chart Review |
| Founded | 2022 | Not recorded |
| Headquarters | New York, New York, United States | Not recorded |
| Website | abstractivehealth.com | medscrub.ai |
Side by Side
Select any grade to read the note behind it.
Each vendor in one paragraph
Written to be quoted whole. Each paragraph opens the AI Health Index profile of the vendor: what the product is, who buys it and what it does.
Abstractive Health retrieves a patient's records from the national exchange networks and summarizes them, with every sentence of the summary linked to the source note it came from. The company is a Carequality implementer; its search looks for records around a patient's current and prior addresses, and it normalizes CCDA, FHIR R4, PDF and scanned documents into one record, with the original files downloadable.
Source: AI Health Index, September 2026
MedScrub strips the patient out of the records first, sends the de identified content to whichever model the customer chooses, and re identifies the answer on the way back. All eighteen HIPAA identifiers are removed by a proxy before data reaches any model, the substitution is reversible, and the company reports 78 percent token cost savings as a side effect of the compression involved.
Source: AI Health Index, September 2026
Questions buyers ask
How do Abstractive Health and MedScrub work with the EHR?
For Abstractive Health, the company is a Carequality implementer, lists CommonWell on its home page, and retrieves CCDA, FHIR R4, PDF and scanned documents into one normalized record, with the original files downloadable and exports in PDF, FHIR and JSON.
With MedScrub, the product pulls conditions, laboratory results, vitals, medications and imaging from the EHR and syncs them into a customer owned clinical data repository, and FHIR accuracy is referenced, which implies standards based exchange. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified September 30, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
How are Abstractive Health and MedScrub priced and sold?
In Abstractive Health's case, a free clinician account (unlimited question answering, five patient searches with summaries and five PDF uploads a month), Standalone at $99 per user per month for up to five users, and an Organization plan at custom pricing, required above five users, with API access and EHR integration.
The 78 percent token cost saving claim is a cost argument rather than a price, and it describes savings on the customer's own model spend rather than on what MedScrub charges. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified September 30, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
How do Abstractive Health and MedScrub handle patient data?
With Abstractive Health, the terms say the company deletes customer information within 36 hours of termination, and the published business associate agreement requires return or destruction of PHI within 30 days of termination and permits use of data de-identified under the HIPAA safe harbor.
In MedScrub's case, all eighteen HIPAA identifiers are removed before content reaches any model, so a consumer or frontier model never receives identifiable data. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified September 30, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
Which settings and specialties do Abstractive Health and MedScrub cover?
For Abstractive Health, the company names outpatient, inpatient and emergency use, pre-visit review, handoff notes, transitions of care and discharge summaries, and population work for the CMS ACCESS model; its case studies cover reproductive endocrinology and VA community care. The peer reviewed validation covers emergency to inpatient handoff notes at one site, and the SBIR study outpatient chart review by two physicians.
With MedScrub, the clinician facing functions are population health screening, pre visit planning and chart question answering, which point toward ambulatory primary care without saying so, and the developer facing use cases span intake and symptom checking chatbots, coding assistance, referral routing, care plan generation and staging environment data. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified September 30, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
Related comparisons
Other published head to head assessments involving these vendors or their closest peers. The full set for this category is on the Clinical Summarization & Chart Review page.
MedScrub's details are unverified. It publishes no price, no business associate terms and no security attestation, and no figure for how reliably its proxy finds identifiers, the property its design depends on. Abstractive Health's peer reviewed study in JAMA Network Open, with Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian coauthors, tested a research model on 100 emergency department handoff records at one site; three emergency physicians rated 50 summaries and found them marginally behind physician notes on usefulness and safety, with no critical safety risk.