Nabla vs TORTUS (2026)
Two European scribes with real evidence, and they proved different things. Nabla's evidence is an independent randomized trial at UCLA Health in which it cut time in notes by 9.5 percent and was the only arm to meet the primary endpoint; it integrates with Epic, athenahealth, Oracle Health, NextGen, Greenway and Arya and publishes its data lifecycle and price. TORTUS co ran a nine site NHS evaluation covering more than 17,000 patients, filters unsupported statements before the clinician sees them and publishes how well that filter works, and its OSLER agent acts inside the record using voice, vision and clicks. In June 2026 it was certified as a UKCA Class IIa medical device by a UK Approved Body. For an NHS organization, TORTUS is built for that setting. For a system running several record platforms outside the UK, Nabla travels better.
- In a UCLA Health randomized trial published in NEJM AI, Nabla cut time in notes by 9.5 percent against usual care and was the only arm to meet the primary endpoint.
- Its record system reach extends well outside the UK, to Epic, athenahealth, Oracle Health, NextGen, Greenway and Arya, plus Nabla Connect for EHR companies.
- The data lifecycle and price are published: audio not stored by default, a 14 day retention window, backups expiring seven days later, no training on customer data, and $119 a month per clinician.
- TORTUS filters before the clinician sees the note. The Shell checks each statement against the consultation and removes anything unsupported, with 92.7 percent of detected hallucinations removed on the live platform and a 75 percent cut in major hallucinations published in npj Digital Medicine.
- It is regulated and certified, holding UKCA Class IIa certification from a UK Approved Body along with ISO 13485, ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus.
- It is built into the NHS, with more than 2.5 million consultations across ambulance hubs, emergency departments, outpatients and general practice, and NHS procurement routes including direct award on the Crown Commercial Service marketplace.
This comparison is published by AI Health Index, an independent research platform that compares healthcare AI vendors objectively. Nabla and TORTUS 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
Side by Side
Select any grade to read the note behind it.
Product updates
The latest logged changes from each vendor, newest first, each linked to its source.
Nabla
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EHR / interoperability
Nabla released the first beta of @nabla/connect-sdk, a browser SDK for EHR and partner pages that embed the Nabla Connect encounter frame.
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Product / capability
Nabla's Connect API now accepts Dutch for the Netherlands and for Belgium as speech languages when partners provision providers, a change applied to all earlier API versions.
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Product / capability
Nabla released version 2026-08-25 of its Core API.
Source
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.
Nabla sells an ambient AI assistant that listens to the visit and drafts a structured clinical note, together with dictation and E/M coding suggestions, to health systems, medical groups and individual clinicians. The company reports more than 85,000 clinicians across more than 130 health organizations and more than 20 million patient encounters a year.
Source: AI Health Index, August 2026
TORTUS is a UK clinical AI company built around NHS deployment, with over 2.5 million consultations recorded across ambulance clinical hubs, emergency departments, outpatients and general practice, the last through the X-on partnership. Its OSLER agent combines voice, vision and click based interaction to read screen context and act inside the record rather than only writing to it, generating notes, referral letters and coding for clinician approval.
Source: AI Health Index, August 2026
Questions buyers ask
How do Nabla and TORTUS work with the EHR?
Nabla pulls patient history and visit context from the EHR, exports structured notes into EHR templates, and places vital signs, diagnoses and patient instructions into charts, flowsheets and clinical fields. The systems named are Epic, athenahealth, Oracle Health, NextGen, Greenway and Arya.
General practice is reached through the X-on Health partnership, where TORTUS powers Surgery Intellect, which works with X-on's Surgery Connect telephony. OSLER can also operate a record system through its interface using vision and clicks, a route to breadth that does not wait for each record vendor to build an integration. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified August 4, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
How are Nabla and TORTUS priced and sold?
An individual clinician can sign up online, use the product free for 30 days, and then pay $119 a month, the rate Nabla's help center states. Organizations buying for many clinicians go through Nabla's team, and group rates are quoted on request, with no group price, volume tier or enterprise unit listed.
TORTUS Enterprise for NHS trusts costs £200,000 a year for up to 100,000 hours of audio processed, with unlimited user licenses across departments, then £2 an hour beyond that, and includes onboarding, site visits, template customization and a live reporting dashboard. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified August 4, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
How do Nabla and TORTUS handle patient data?
Audio is not stored by default, notes are kept for 14 days from the moment an encounter is created, and a customer can shorten that window, down to a few hours according to Nabla's French compliance page. On expiry the data leaves the application and remains only in backups, which expire seven days later.
In TORTUS's case, the company states that no model is trained on customer data and no data is retained, gives patient audio retained at rest as zero by design, and its data processing addendum says transcriptions, summaries and letters are not stored in the system; deleted data is cryptographically erased. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified August 4, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
Which settings and specialties do Nabla and TORTUS cover?
For Nabla, customers range from individual practices to large health systems, and emergency and inpatient clinicians can document on mobile inside Epic. Nabla supports more than 35 languages, from English, Spanish and French to several Arabic dialects, Hindi, Mandarin and Haitian Creole.
With TORTUS, the coverage is deep in the NHS and unevidenced elsewhere. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified August 4, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
Related comparisons
Other published head to head assessments involving these vendors or their closest peers.
Neither vendor is a straightforward purchase outside its home region. TORTUS is deep in the NHS and publishes no business associate agreement for US customers; its NHS trust price, £200,000 a year for up to 100,000 hours of audio, is listed on the G-Cloud framework. The UCLA trial behind Nabla's result ran in outpatient care at a single academic health system, limited to English language visits.
An earlier version of this comparison said Nabla's free tier lacked a business associate agreement; Nabla's terms make accepting its published agreement a condition of use for any customer subject to HIPAA. That statement was corrected on 13 September 2026. It also said TORTUS's NHS rates were not published; they are on its G-Cloud 15 listing, corrected on 11 October 2026.