LUCI transcribes and summarizes therapy sessions entirely on your own Mac or Windows machine. No bot in the telehealth call, no audio upload, no vendor retaining transcripts — and no Enterprise plan required to make it private. You get your evenings back without handing PHI to a third party.
Documentation burnout is real, and AI scribes genuinely help. But look at what the mainstream tools ask in exchange: your sessions — the most sensitive conversations in healthcare — uploaded to a vendor's servers, transcribed there, and retained there. HIPAA can accommodate that arrangement, but only with machinery: HHS treats any cloud service handling ePHI as a business associate requiring a signed BAA, and per HHS, holding only encrypted data doesn't exempt a vendor. So the market sorts by contract tier — Otter and Fireflies sign BAAs only for Enterprise customers, and Zoom's HIPAA mode disables its own AI summaries because that processing happens on external servers. A solo practitioner on a normal plan is, in practice, locked out of compliant cloud AI.
LUCI dissolves the problem instead of contracting around it. Speech-to-text and summarization run on your own machine. Session audio never travels; transcripts and notes live in an encrypted database on your disk. There is no vendor processing PHI — so the BAA question loses its subject. Your obligations become the familiar ones you already meet: secure your device, control access, get informed consent.
The professional guidance points the same direction. The APA's 2025 ethical guidance on AI in practice tells psychologists to obtain informed patient consent before AI recording and to scrutinize where a tool sends data and what it does with it. With LUCI, that scrutiny has a short answer: nowhere, and nothing.
Cloud AI scribes upload the most sensitive conversations in healthcare to vendor servers, then manage the risk with contracts. LUCI removes the transfer: transcription and summarization run on your own machine, and recordings never exist anywhere else. Under HHS guidance, a vendor touching ePHI is a business associate — LUCI's architecture means there's no vendor touching anything.
Otter's and Fireflies' BAAs are Enterprise-only; solo practitioners and group practices on normal tiers are out of luck. Zoom's HIPAA mode switches its AI summaries off. LUCI's privacy posture is the same for one clinician as for a hospital — it's how the product works, not a contract level you unlock.
45 CFR 164.508 gives psychotherapy notes heightened protection precisely because they're the clinician's private working record. Keeping session recordings and process notes in an encrypted store on your own device — separate from any shared system — is the digital version of the locked drawer the rule assumes.
No bot joins your telehealth call and announces itself mid-silence. LUCI records quietly on your machine after you and your client have agreed to it — preserving the frame that makes therapy work, while ending after-hours documentation.
Before: informed consent, documented once and revisited as your practice requires. LUCI only records when you start it.
During: for telehealth, LUCI captures your machine's audio with no bot joining the call; in person, it records through your laptop microphone. Transcription runs locally — it works even with the internet off.
After: a transcript and structured summary are ready on your machine minutes after the session. Review, edit into your note format, and file — every summary line links to a timestamp, so checking the AI's work takes seconds, consistent with APA guidance to review AI-generated content before clinical use.
Across sessions: ask "what has this client said about sleep over the last month?" and get a locally computed, cited answer — continuity of care without a vendor database of your caseload.
LUCI keeps PHI on your device; safeguarding that device — encryption is built in, access control and backups are yours — remains your responsibility under the Security Rule, as it is for any local record. Obtain informed consent before recording; roughly a dozen states require all-party consent. This page is product information, not legal or compliance advice — consult your compliance counsel for your practice's specifics.
LUCI takes a different path than 'compliant cloud': session audio, transcripts, and notes are processed and stored entirely on your own device, encrypted at rest, and never uploaded. Because no vendor receives PHI, the business-associate relationship that HIPAA's cloud guidance regulates never gets created — there is no third party to sign a BAA with, because there is no third party. You remain the covered entity responsible for safeguarding your own device, as you already are for paper notes and your EHR login.
Only at the top of their price lists: both gate BAAs to Enterprise plans — individual and small-practice tiers don't qualify, meaning using those tiers with PHI isn't compliant. Zoom will sign a BAA on eligible paid plans, but enabling HIPAA mode disables or limits its AI Companion summaries, because that AI processing happens on external servers. The pattern is consistent: cloud AI and PHI mix only with expensive contractual scaffolding. On-device processing doesn't need the scaffolding.
Psychotherapy notes — a clinician's process notes kept separate from the medical record — get extra protection under HIPAA: 45 CFR 164.508 requires specific patient authorization for nearly any use or disclosure. That makes them a particularly poor fit for cloud tools whose vendors retain transcripts. With LUCI, session recordings and your notes live only on your encrypted local disk, which maps naturally onto the keep-them-separate, keep-them-close handling the rule envisions.
Yes, always. The APA's 2025 guidance on AI in professional practice says psychologists should obtain informed consent before using an AI scribe to record or transcribe sessions, and roughly a dozen US states require all parties to consent to recording. LUCI changes what happens after consent — the recording stays on your machine rather than a vendor's cloud — not whether you ask.
LUCI produces a transcript and structured summary of each session on-device, which you can shape into your documentation format. Consistent with APA guidance, treat AI drafts as drafts: review clinical content before it enters the record. LUCI links every summary line to a timestamp so verification is fast.
Both. For telehealth, LUCI captures system and microphone audio on your machine — no bot joins the video call, so nothing intrudes on the session frame. For in-person sessions, it records through your laptop microphone. Either way, transcription happens locally and works even with no internet connection.
LUCI transcribes and summarizes on your own machine. PHI stays there, encrypted at rest.
100% free. Mac & Windows.