Berta: an open-source, modular tool for AI-enabled clinical documentation

A research team from Alberta Health Services (AHS) and collaborating institutions has developed and deployed Berta, a groundbreaking open-source platform for AI-powered clinical documentation. Unlike commercial AI scribes that cost $99-$600 per physician monthly and operate as opaque "black boxes," Berta was built as a modular system that health institutions can fully control. The team customized and integrated it directly with AHS's existing Snowflake AI Data Cloud infrastructure, ensuring all patient data and audio recordings remain within the health system's secure environment. This addresses critical concerns over data sovereignty, governance, and the ability to audit and improve AI models locally.

During an eight-month pilot from November 2024 to July 2025, Berta was used by 198 emergency physicians across 105 urban and rural facilities in Alberta. The system processed over 2,800 hours of audio to generate 22,148 clinical documentation sessions, with monthly usage growing from 680 to 5,530 sessions. Crucially, the operating cost averaged less than $30 per physician per month, representing a massive 70-95% cost reduction compared to proprietary alternatives. Following the successful pilot, AHS has approved scaling Berta to 850 physicians. By releasing the entire platform as open-source, the team provides a reproducible blueprint that other health systems can adapt, enabling widespread, secure, and economically viable adoption of AI documentation technology.