Aven

Inspiration

In a 15-minute appointment, patients hear a diagnosis, a new prescription, a referral and three instructions, then walk out and forget half of it. Nobody checks the new drug against their allergies in the moment, and nobody chases the referral that never calls back. Doctors got AI scribes that work for the clinic. Patients got nothing that works for them, in the room and in between visits.

What it does

Aven is a contact in the Relay messenger. You text it and call it like a person.

• Connect in two taps. Aven loads your records through FinchNode, then calls to introduce itself and points out what's worth raising (e.g. "your kidney function fell from eGFR 39 to 31 over 18 months").
• In the appointment. Call Aven and say you're at your doctor's. It asks the room for consent once, then listens silently. If the doctor proposes something that conflicts with your record, a one-line banner appears: "⚠️ Bactrim: you're allergic to sulfa drugs. Mention it now." Tap Why? for the evidence, including the drug class from NIH's RxNav. Say "Hey Aven, when was my last kidney test?" and it answers out loud from your record. It stays silent when the doctor avoids the drug or asks about history.
• Right after. A short recap, then Aven calls you: what was decided, who's doing what (clinic: nephrology referral; you: kidney labs before that appointment), and the follow-up plan, agreed by voice ("call me Thursday morning instead"). If you got something wrong ("I'll do the labs after"), it quotes the doctor's exact words.
• In between. Check-in calls: did the referral call come? Labs done? If the clinic dropped something, Aven messages the clinic for you right away, shows you exactly what it sent, and passes on their reply. It also finds the nearest pharmacy from your shared location, checks a pill-bottle photo against your record, and books appointments by calling the clinic.
• Next visit. "brief" gives your new doctor a one-page summary that leads with what's still open from last time.

Every claim carries a source (a record with system and date, a transcript line, or "patient-reported"). Aven never diagnoses and never tells you what to take.

How we built it

• Relay: the agent's WebSocket for chat, buttons, location sharing and map pins; Relay Calls (PCM16 over WebRTC, in TypeScript) for every voice moment, inbound and outbound.
• FinchNode: patient-authorized normalized records (a synthetic patient, Harriet Lindqvist: 14 meds, sulfa allergy, CKD stage 3).
• Neon Postgres + pgvector: records with embeddings for sourced answers, plus visits, transcripts, recaps, care commitments, the agenda, follow-up plans and chat memory, all in one database.
• ElevenLabs: Scribe v2 realtime for live transcripts (keyterms biased to the patient's drugs) and text-to-speech for every call.
• OpenAI (gpt-5.4-mini): conflict checks, recaps, plans and conversation, with strict rules (sources, no diagnosis, no medication advice).
• NIH RxNav / RxClass: drug ingredients and classes, so "Bactrim is a sulfonamide" is cited, not guessed.
• OpenStreetMap: nearest pharmacies.

Challenges

• Getting live audio from a Relay call into speech-to-text in TypeScript, and nudging within about 1–2 seconds of the doctor's words.
• Knowing when not to speak: correction-aware checks ("we won't use Bactrim" stays silent), echo filtering on speakerphone, and never asking the same question twice.
• Keeping every medical statement sourced, while still sounding like a person on the phone.

What we learned

The hard part isn't summarizing a visit. It's the follow-through: tracking who owes what, telling "not done" apart from "not seen yet", and catching misunderstandings while they're still fixable.

What's next

• Aven for families: caregivers get a parent's recaps and calls.
• Real phone calls to clinics and pharmacies (ElevenLabs + Twilio).
• Comparing what was said with what later appears in the record (FinchNode change feed).
• A pilot with patients managing several doctors, measuring follow-ups completed and questions resolved. Pricing: $12/month.

Built with

Built With

• elevenlabs
• finchnode
• neon
• nih-rxnav
• node.js
• openai
• pgvector
• postgresql
• relay
• typescript