Lyrebird vs MedMETs: the 47-second-per-consult difference that adds up to 9 hours a month

Lyrebird Health came out of one of Australia's best voice-AI shops. The transcription quality is exceptional — particularly for accented speech, which is where most clinical scribes still struggle. If you're evaluating purely on voice quality, Lyrebird is the answer.

The 47-second difference

I measured this myself over 60 consults — 30 with Lyrebird, 30 with MedMETs. Both produced sign-off-ready notes. The time from end-of-consult to sign-off averaged 1m 22s on Lyrebird and 35s on MedMETs. The difference — 47 seconds per consult — is workflow, not transcription.

Lyrebird's note lives in a dedicated app. To get it into Best Practice, I copy and paste. MedMETs pushes the structured note directly into the EHR fields. The voice is comparable; the next step is what differs.

47 seconds doesn't sound like much

Per consult, no. Per 30-consult day, that's 23 minutes. Per month, that's 9 hours of clinician time. Per year, it's roughly 110 hours per full-time GP. At average chargeable rates, the workflow gap is worth $32,000 per clinician per year.

I'm not saying Lyrebird is bad. I'm saying the math compounds.

Where Lyrebird stays ahead

Voice quality on non-standard accents. I have several patients whose accents MedMETs occasionally struggles with — usually rapid Mandarin-inflected English. Lyrebird handles these noticeably better. If your patient population is heavily multilingual, Lyrebird's voice tech is a real consideration.

Where MedMETs is structurally different

MedMETs isn't a voice product. It's a clinical platform that happens to include a voice product. The scribe is one feature of a wider system — care plans, screening, patient app, sync, billing flags. If voice quality is your only criterion, that platform context might be irrelevant. If you're solving for the whole consult, it's central.