Digital Conversations

The full power of conversational AI is being unleashed on the world through a steady stream of technological advancements, such as ChatGPT. It's only a matter of time before language becomes the dominant interface between humans and machines. The healthcare industry will become one of the prime beneficiaries of this technology leap forward. In this episode of Digital Conversations, Greg Kefer was joined by Sonam Shah, Director of Product Management at Lifelink Systems, who is developing advanced conversational AI for large healthcare organizations. Sonam shares her perspectives on what it takes to deliver desired outcomes in the context of high patient satisfaction. She also provides insights on how to overcome the array of complexity and compliance hurdles that are so prevalent in healthcare.

Business intelligence is a cornerstone of every digital transformation, with businesses spending $140B per year in analytics software. As conversational AI and digital engagement technology matures, a new domain of performance insights is emerging with the ability to measure every moment of the interaction between a business and its customers. In this episode, Greg Kefer and Justin Mardjuki discuss the implication of new conversation-level insights for the healthcare industry. As provider systems, payers, and pharmaceutical companies deploy new conversational engagement channels for their patients, how can they best track and measure patient interaction to drive program improvements?

Clinical research studies are increasing in numbers, they're getting more complex, and they must be executed in a very challenging, tight labor environment. These are some of the key drivers of decentralized programs that use technology to lessen the burden of requiring patients to be physically present in order to participate.  Despite advances in IT, informed consent — the linchpin moment between recruiting and participation — remains a challenge. In this episode, Justin Mardjuki and Greg Kefer discuss why eConsent is so hard, and how modern conversational technology may finally connect the dots by making the consent process easy for patients, while also satisfying multiple regulatory and collaboration requirements that research initiatives require.

Observational studies are designed to establish baseline data for diseases and treatments across broad patient populations. There are over 94,000 of them each year. Often, these studies go on for an extended period of time, which places challenges on study sponsors to keep participants engaged and motivated. In this episode, Greg Kefer talks with Rob Chipperfield, a clinical study executive who has spent over a decade helping the world's leading research organizations design and operationalize real world studies. Digital engagement is the key to ensuring participants follow the protocols, provide feedback and not drop out. Mobile technology is vital, but study designers look for was to keep things very simple so participants stay engaged for the duration of the study. The low friction nature of Conversational AI may prove to be the ideal approach to keeping communication channels going through the duration of the study.

As medications get more specialized, so has the need for better engagement to help patients with their prescriptions. Manufacturers are investing in tools and programs that can help patients on their medication journeys, and digital strategies are front and center. In this episode, Greg Kefer is joined by Emily Gibb, who leads the patient service organization at GSK, a global biopharma company with a purpose to unite science, technology, and talent to get ahead of disease together. In this wide-ranging discussion, Emily shares her thoughts about innovation and how modern, mobile technology is maturing and lowering barriers for patients. Ultimately, the goal is to provide a digital experience that is simple and natural, so patients can get the answers and support they need to stay healthy.

More than 37 million Americans have diabetes today and an additional 96 million adults have pre-diabetes. Access to insulin treatment for many is vital. But in the past 10 years, the cost of insulin has increased by more than 1000% which is driving one in every four people with diabetes to ration or skip doses of insulin. The government and private sector are taking aggressive action to lower pricing, but that may not be enough. In this episode, Samir Khanna and Greg Kefer discuss the state of the diabetes situation and the initiatives that are in progress to address the insulin cost crisis. The cost of the drug is a key part of the solution. There's also a massive patient communication challenge that will not be solved through traditional channels such as calling or e-mail. Tens of millions of people need to be engaged, educated, and guided to the right treatment and financial programs, and emerging conversational technology may be the only way to achieve the level of communication scale required.

Healthcare has become an expensive, clunky mess for everyone. The path forward has to be digital, but with labor shortages showing no signs of slowing down, the time has come to double down on innovation. The good news is that technology has matured to a place where it may finally be able to make a significant difference.  In this episode, Shuo Qiao, Co-founder and CTO of Moving Analytics, and Greg Kefer had a discussion about transformative innovation in healthcare. More than 6 billion people from all corners of the globe own a smartphone today and that's how we begin eliminating many of the physical and financial barriers to care. And those devices are only getting exponentially smarter. As billions of people embrace their personal devices as their digital hub for care navigation, the masses of data being collected are driving better training models for AI, which in turn delivers better prediction accuracy, smarter digital experiences, and ultimately, better outcomes at lower costs. 

The technology behind Conversational AI is maturing rapidly across all sectors as consumers increasingly relying on language to interact with their devices. The labor shortage that plagues most industries has set the stage for technology that powers digital conversations, and the sector that may benefit most is healthcare. Anil Nair, Chief Technology Officer at Lifelink Systems, is developing conversational systems that can handle the millions of routine, administrative interactions that patients must deal with related to treatment and prescriptions. In this episode, Anil shares his perspective on what it will take to bring Conversational AI into the digital healthcare experience, while preserving the important, personal relationships between patients and their caregivers. The conversational platform of tomorrow will provide a mix of interoperability, analytics, and NLP with advanced design capacity that considers the “grammar” of digital interactions, and allows providers and life science companies to optimize each engagement to deliver results.

Billions of people are now fully dependent on various forms of technology as part of their daily lives. Healthcare is no exception. As paper forms give way to digital health records and electronic communications, the risks of losing control of private patient information has risen dramatically. Every organization that deals with healthcare data must come to grips with an increasingly challenging landscape of criminal sophistication and the constant flow of new regulations that are being put in place by international, federal, and local authorities. In this episode, Greg Kefer is joined by Justin Wiley, Director of Information Security and Compliance at Lifelink Systems, to discuss the current state of compliance in healthcare IT. For any company that is involved in buying, selling, or delivering technology in healthcare, a sound approach to security and compliance has become table stakes. The industry can't stand still. Digital innovation is more important than ever, but there are ways to ensure the technology being put in place has been vetted. Justin describes SOC 2, one of the “gold standard” audits, that dives deeply into technology organizations and how they operate, helping ensure best practices are in place and followed. 

Conversational AI is rapidly maturing and becoming a viable technology option for healthcare organizations that need to digitize and scale patient engagement. Language-based user interfaces are ideal for reducing engagement friction and navigating high complexity. But technology experiences that are high on the user friendliness scale also require robust technology platforms below the waterline to make everything happen.  Alex Thorpe, who runs product development at Lifelink Systems, joined Greg Kefer to discuss the platform requirements to deliver outcomes and patient satisfaction. Healthcare organizations are saddled with a complex array of internal systems, regulations, processes that must be part of digital patient communications. The conversational platform of the future must bring a combination of integration, configuration, and analytics capabilities in order to achieve the level of scale and adoption the industry so desperately needs.

The nursing profession is one the most cherished professions there is. Those who take the plunge are true heroes that must work long, hard shifts to help patients of all types get through very difficult situations. When the COVID pandemic hit, nurses had to take things up to another level in order to deal with the massive waves of sick patients that flooded the healthcare system.  Logan Scarbeary, who spent a decade in a nursing role at a major academic medical center, joined Greg Kefer to share his perspectives on the current state of the industry. While nursing was always a difficult environment to work in, there was an element of fun in rising to the challenge and pushing through. Unfortunately, COVID made it impossible to actually do the work. Technology is one of the problems. Too many hours are spent typing data into systems. It frustrates caregivers, it frustrates patients, and it's expensive. Logan believes the future lies in smart digital assistants that can take on the redundant processes and communications, which will free the care teams to do what the do best: take care of people.  

A recent study looked into patient perceptions about the administrative side of healthcare and found that tasks such as setting appointments, completing paperwork, and getting prior authorizations have gotten so hard, many patients have chosen to defer care to avoid the hassle. Investments to give patients the tools to manage their own healthcare have not paid off. At the same time, technology is making things easier in other business sectors. In this episode of Digital Conversations, Samir Khanna and Greg Kefer discuss the issues that are driving the collective patient administrative headache that shows no sign of abating. Technology is capable of providing patients with some relief, but all too often, investment priorities are driven by the need to improve processes and productivity within the organization. If patients are saying they would rather go to the DMV than deal with healthcare, maybe the time has come to refocus priorities.

The most lasting impact to the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to be the healthcare labor shortage that shows no signs abating. Hundreds of thousands of workers have left the field, and it's not just doctors and nurses. Nearly one third of healthcare spending is in the administrative domain and that sector has seen massive reductions in the support staff that typically help patients navigate the complexities associated with getting healthcare.  The labor shortage also isn't just impacting healthcare providers. The life sciences industry is also experiencing challenges in staffing clinical research projects, or supporting patients that have complex therapy programs.  In this episode, Justin Mardjuki and Greg Kefer discuss the ongoing challenge of staffing and how technology can play a role in replacing lost human capacity with automated digital outreach. By automating work that is typically scripted, repetitive, and high volume, advanced conversational tools also help patients on their journeys, keep them engaged, and improve outcomes.

Genentech US Medical Affairs is involved in hundreds of concurrent clinical trials that involve a spectrum of participants and investigators. The world of clinical trials and therapy development has been evolving and now COVID-19 is forcing the industry to innovate in different ways as it deals with labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, and a new virtual-first patient engagement environment. Nik Kolatkar, Vice President, Scientific Operations, US Medical Affairs at Genentech sat down with Greg Kefer to discuss his vision for reimagining the way trials are executed. In order to meet modern consumer expectations, Genentech is leveraging advanced conversational AI to engage trial participants, to diversify, to democratize, and to create a constant feedback mechanism — all made possible through simple, smart, interactive messaging on smartphones.   Nik also describes the Genentech Innovation Hub strategy and how that team takes a startup mindset predicated on looking horizontally across the organization to achieve small, quick wins and then scaling the technology that works across the entire project portfolio.

Well before the COVID-19 pandemic put a new level of pressure on healthcare, the industry was struggling to deliver patient experiences that were on par with retail, banking, or travel. With more consumer companies evolving into healthcare services providers, the pressure to engage patients at scale became intense for hospital systems. Then COVID-19 arrived, which first pushed capacity to the limit, and has since created an environment that has driven a mass exodus of healthcare workers. If ever there was a time for advanced digital engagement, it's now. In this episode of Digital Conversations, Jay Roszhart, President of the Ambulatory Group at Memorial Health, joined us for a deep discussion about how he envisions the future of healthcare — one that is predicated on building loyalty, trust, and long-term relationships. Jay is driving a digital transformation that is designed to make the patient experience as easy as using Google or Facebook. He describes how conversational chatbots were deployed to handle a huge amount of demand, which allowed stretched care teams to focus on the complicated things that only humans can do.   In one example, Jay describes how conversational AI technology allowed Memorial Health to execute more than 70,000 digital conversations with patients about COVID-19 test results over a two month period. The initiative saved 10-15 FTEs worth of time, and resulted in a 96% patient satisfaction rating. 

The cost of prescription medicine continues to surge for patients. As insurance coverage evolves, the out of pocket burden now exceeds $80B each year. While government and business policy leaders continue to search for a solution, there are opportunities to use innovation to bridge gaps, provide better patient services, and lower costs at the same time. Samir Khanna from Lifelink Systems joined Greg Kefer for a discussion about how the industry vision to be more consumer-centric can address the prescription experience for patients. In this episode, we talk about key challenges, and how digital assistants simplify drug information by breaking down dense clinical content into easy-to-digest conversational elements and then improving medication adherence through ongoing outreach that's tailored to each individual. As the healthcare industry navigates worker shortages and the evolving retail landscape, the opportunity to advance prescription support with advanced digital engagement has arrived.

Despite countless billions of dollars spent, and decades of effort, healthcare still lags behind other industries when it comes to successfully using digital technologies to interact with its customers — the patients. The ongoing challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in rapid advances in digital health solutions and telehealth. The pharmaceutical industry essentially performed a miracle in delivering several effective new drugs in just months. Bradford Lee, VP of Life Sciences at Lifelink Systems, sat down with Greg Kefer to share some of the developments he's been part of in his role working with top innovation executives across all segments of the pharmaceutical industry. The combination of big organizations, legacy processes, and heavy regulation have historically held back rapid innovation and Silicon Valley thinking, but that may be changing.   Mature technology that's mobile and conversational is lowering the friction barrier for patients and trial participants. Healthcare providers are showcasing their digital transformation successes, paving the path for the entire industry. We are also seeing the traditional internal barriers for digital transformation come down as life science companies begin to look for ways to deploy simple, effective solutions quickly to get wins on the board and begin to generate the kinds of results needed for wide-scale innovation. Healthcare may be on the cusp of finally catching up to the other consumer industries that the leaders keep saying they want to emulate. 

The healthcare system always operated in a way that depended on providers to do the right thing, to step up and make sure nobody gets left behind. With the COVID-19 pandemic raging through a second year, the strains being placed on doctors, nurses, and other caregivers has been intense. In many ways, the pandemic has exposed the flaws of a system that was never designed for maximum efficiency or optimized patient experiences. In this episode of Digital Conversations, Ara Feinstein, a trauma surgeon and physician executive at Banner Health, discusses the current state of healthcare and COVID-19 in context of the big innovation opportunities that can potentially make a difference. In this wide-ranging discussion, Ara shares perspectives from the physician viewpoint on how technology can lighten the administrative burden that clinical teams face, and how that can result in better patient experiences. Ara envisions a digital future where health data is unlocked from internal systems of record and moved into personal devices that are owned and carried by the patients themselves.

Healthcare has dealt with staffing shortages for years, and when COVID-19 arrived, the challenges became acute. Despite significant IT investments, process efficiency benefits have been elusive because staff or patients are still required to do additional work to make the technology perform. Now, as virtual care takes hold with patients, a new “third gear” is beginning to emerge. In this episode of Digital Conversations, Greg Johnsen and Greg Kefer discuss digital patient engagement, and specifically how conversational technology takes on a new role as a digital worker that handles the communications and administrative aspects of delivering and receiving care. As armies of digital assistants become high-scale, efficient solutions that relieve overworked human teams, while simultaneously helping patients navigate to successful outcomes, we will begin to see important new KPIs emerge that measure digital engagement effectiveness. 

Healthcare systems of record have matured and serve as the digital home for all patient data. As the strategic focus shifts beyond the four walls, success at engaging patients through smart, digital interactions will be contingent on the ability to leverage that data in an EMR or CRM system so that communications are personalized and effective. A smart digital assistant should know things like the patient's name, their doctor, when their last appointment was, and what prescriptions they have ー “knowledge” that is only possible if the external facing solution is tightly integrated to the system of record. In this episode, Greg Kefer and Justin Mardjuki discuss the opportunities and realities of connecting systems of record with advanced systems of engagement, and how that technology combination is vital in delivering on the promise of wide scale patient engagement, high user satisfaction, and complex workflow orchestration. We share specific examples of how virtual care experiences become effective and satisfying for patients by utilizing data through bidirectional integration with systems of record.

The race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine shined a light on an issue that has challenged the pharmaceutical industry for years. Underrepresented minority communities are often disproportionately impacted by diseases, yet those groups are usually underrepresented in the clinical trials that are designed to assess the effectiveness of drugs that they need. As one of the world's largest biotechnology companies, Genentech is tapping advanced mobile technology to help increase the diversity of trial participants and improve the experience. In this episode of Digital Conversations, Nik Kolatkar, VP of Evidence Generation, US Medical Affairs at Genentech, joined Greg Kefer for a discussion about clinical trial innovation.  Genentech runs a portfolio of 500 trials around the world and is using advanced technology to drive trust, education, and convenience for participants. Through smart, language-based interactions, digital navigators eliminate the need for participants to report to ivory tower academic centers and instead, provide the capabilities for anyone to be part of bringing advanced science to their communities, regardless of location, race, gender, income, or age.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a rapidly-maturing technology space that is focused on the high-volume, repetitive, low-end tasks that have traditionally been handled by human teams.  High levels of complexity and data make healthcare an ideal target for RPA and we are seeing advances across a number of back office functions, ranging from billing, to supply chain, to claims management. At the same time, a new class of digital assistants is maturing and scaling on the patient-facing side of the healthcare operation. Conversational AI is now used by millions of patients for things such as scheduling appointments, filling out forms, and checking in to appointments. The healthcare “front office” is experiencing its own version of RPA.   In this episode, Justin Mardjuki and Greg Kefer drill into the world of RPA technology and discuss the potential for a merging of the traditional back office process efficiencies with a digitally-enabled network of patients who are using conversational AI to interact with their healthcare providers in a structured, paperless, compliant manner. Patient engagement can increase, while back office workloads can be reduced even further. It’s promising.

According to a recent survey of more than 2400 adults, 74% rated the doctor’s office waiting room experience as fair or poor, while 80% indicated they would rather check in to their appointments virtually, on their mobile device. Waiting rooms have been on the innovation priority list for a long time, but the need to reopen for routine care in the era of COVID-19 has forced providers to find ways to virtualize the entire appointment intake process. In this episode, Sarah Larsen, Chief Growth Officer at Lifelink Systems, joined Greg Kefer for a discussion about how physical waiting room spaces are giving way to virtual alternatives, which is actually a good thing for patients. Healthcare providers are in a battle with big consumer brands that are moving into healthcare and the winners will capture the hearts and minds of consumers by providing a technology experience that’s on par with other industries. For providers, waiting rooms are frequently the front line, first point of contact with a patient, and based on the research findings, the experience preference isn’t a room full of sick people and paper forms. It’s virtual, mobile, and simple.

COVID-19 is a once-in-a-generation career moment for healthcare professionals. Despite the incredible challenges that continue to reshape the industry, the pandemic has created new opportunities to address aspects of the patient experience that needed to change anyway.  Jeff Johnson, who leads digital business at one of the nation’s biggest healthcare systems, joined Greg Kefer for a discussion about how Banner has deployed advanced mobile technology to not only help deal with the overwhelming demand created by the pandemic, but also ensure that patients can get the care for things that are unrelated to coronavirus. Jeff describes specific examples about how Banner has deployed conversational AI to virtualize waiting rooms, streamline COVID-19 vaccinations, and improve the emergency room experience for patients.  The pace of innovation has increased significantly and it shows no signs of slowing down. In Jeff’s opinion, a lot of the digital transformation that was accelerated because of COVID-19 will be permanent. High patient satisfaction with new solutions suggests that may be a good thing.

There’s no shortage of great technology. For an industry as big as Healthcare, there are literally thousands of different, viable solutions on the market. But driving adoption is always a challenge, especially when the solution is used by internal teams and by patients. Huge investments have been made in deploying systems of record, but if the need arises to bolster it with other systems, buyers cannot expect users to deal with different user interfaces, logins, and dashboards. It requires a smart platform approach. In this episode, Justin Mardjuki and Greg Kefer talk about technology that’s excellent at engaging patients, but is also designed to work behind the scenes in conjunction with primary CRM systems, so large organizations can minimize change management challenges and focus on streamlining workflows and optimizing human teams.

After spending the past several years designing and building conversational digital assistants at IBM, Andrew Freed decided to share his learnings and experiences with the broader community. In his new book, Creating Virtual Assistants, Andrew explains the concepts involved in building effective conversational AI that can automate common inquiries and easily address your customers' most common problems.  In this episode of Digital Conversations, Andrew and Greg Kefer discuss the themes of the book and specifically how those concepts apply to healthcare. As the COVID-19 pandemic applies massive stress on global healthcare systems, can digital assistants help the industry rise to the challenge and provide the conversational scale necessary to engage the billions of people that need care? The discussion touches on how the principles of the book are front and center in the minds of the innovation community.  Creating Virtual Assistants is available at manning.com and Digital Conversations listeners can take advantage of a 35% discount by using the code poddigital21 during checkout.

As we recorded this episode, the healthcare industry is in the midst of a struggle to administer the hundreds of millions of vaccinations necessary to contain the COVID-19 virus. One of the problems is the continued reliance on outdated administrative and communication approaches — paper, phone calls, e-mail — which become bottlenecks in the race to achieve the levels of scale and speed that are required. Jenn Masamitsu, a physical therapist and a conversational technology designer, was recently vaccinated and experienced the process first hand, which got her thinking about better ways. Jenn sat down with us to share her ideas about how modern, mobile technology is an ideal solution for an operation of this magnitude. Conversational technology uses natural language to lower barriers and deliver outcomes, which is precisely what’s needed if we are going to administer the 450 million vaccinations required to achieve herd immunity.

Healthcare providers have invested billions of dollars digitizing patient data in large systems of record. Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems have become the digital home of patient information. The opportunity to tap into that data and leverage it with other, surrounding cloud technology solutions is maturing and companies like Redox provide that integration capability. Niko Skievaski, president and co-founder of Redox, joined us to talk about how new healthcare digital ecosystems are emerging where multiple best of breed tools all operate with a core set of data, and how advanced integration technology improves the overall experience for patient users. The emergence of value-based care is driving a rapid shift. Smart technology knows a patient’s name, it knows about upcoming appointments, and it knows some medical history. And importantly, smart technology like this is what drives adoption and loyalty.

There are countless specialty products that get prescribed each day. In the specialty pharmaceutical space, patients often require additional support to access treatment, determine coverage of benefits, understand how to administer therapies, manage potential side effects, and much more. Case managers work directly with patients to enroll them in care programs and support them on their journeys to better health. In this episode, Ron Lacy, VP of Products and Innovation at UBC, a leading provider of pharmaceutical support services, sat down with us to discuss how they help patients navigate complex care journeys that often accompany specialty therapies, and how they are innovating with conversational artificial intelligence (AI) to improve care outcomes. UBC has integrated digital assistants into various patient support programs. By augmenting the human teams with automated conversational chatbots, UBC is delivering increased patient engagement rates and ultimately better outcomes for patients.

While we all need healthcare at some point in our lives, it’s ultimately a business that is at its best when it’s focused on the patients. Healthcare does not work as designed unless the patients are interacting with their providers to manage care in lasting, meaningful ways. Unfortunately, healthcare systems and workflows are primarily designed to support episodic, one-to-one interactions, which are increasingly becoming unsustainable and ineffective. Jay Roszhart, President of Ambulatory Services at Memorial Health System in Springfield, Illinois has a point of view on what the root problems are, and he has a vision for the path forward. In this wide ranging discussion, Jay describes the impacts of consumerism and technology on healthcare and why things must change. He is executing a vision to reimagine patient engagement from its current episodic, high-friction state to one based on building long-term, ongoing relationships that are enabled through advanced, conversational technology.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted healthcare virtualization into a higher gear across multiple industry segments and workflow areas. Telemedicine might be the catch-all term for modern, digital communications between providers and patients, but a big opportunity awaits organizations — patient intake. Greg Kefer and Justin Mardjuki sat down in our virtual studio to discuss how providers are finally doing away with paper and giving patients mobile solutions to share their health information, complete forms, and engage virtually. A virtual waiting room capability is one of the most promising innovations to emerge out of the COVID-19 crisis.

While healthcare has been on a virtualization march for decades, the COVID-19 pandemic has rushed forward significant changes in the way healthcare gets delivered. Front and center has been the emergence of telehealth services, where in-person appointments have given way to video calls. By some estimates, telehealth is up 83x over pre-pandemic levels. In the episode, Greg Kefer and Justin Mardjuki discuss the telehealth phenomenon and how it fits into the broader virtualization push that’s transforming healthcare. There are countless patient touchpoints surrounding the actual physician interactions that are ripe for virtualization. 

Historically, the development cycle for new drugs takes years. It’s a process that includes several phases of clinical trials with patient volunteers. Many trials struggle or even fail because of the challenges in recruiting participants. Today, massive speed and scale are vital as the pharmaceutical industry races to find a vaccine for COVID-19 that’s safe and effective for everyone on the planet. In this episode of digital conversations, Greg Kefer and Justin Mardjuki discuss new innovations in healthcare scheduling automation that have proven highly effective at large healthcare systems. Conversational technology that engages patients on their mobile phones can virtualize screening, education, and scheduling, which might provide the kind of communication horsepower required to supercharge the clinical trial process at a time when it’s needed more than ever.

Robert Neff, VP of Digital Solution Development at Jefferson Health, dialed into the Digital Conversations studio to discuss the state of innovation in healthcare. In this wide ranging discussion, we covered the current state of IT, the impacts of COVID-19, and how the pandemic has reset approaches to technology innovation across the healthcare industry. Rob, who was recently recognized by Constellation Research as one of the IT leaders on their annual Business Transformation 150 list, also described how Jefferson Health approaches innovation in order to improve access for patients.   As providers navigate the challenges of providing care during the pandemic, there’s also a long term financial impact that will likely ensure that a lot of the smart, effective technology solutions that got deployed in order to deliver care during COVID-19 will remain in place indefinitely.

The debate whether it’s better for enterprises to build or buy business software has gone on for decades. As thousands of companies started investing in commercial software suites, an innovation curve was created that no single company could match. The emergence of cloud added economic and configuration benefits to software that few buyers could pass up. Today, it’s rare to see companies developing their own proprietary business software. With a new class of conversational software beginning to take hold, a number of companies face the build-buy decision once again. The simplicity of language-based human-machine interactions implies that a bot toolkit and good writing skills is enough to successfully stand up an effective conversational front end. Conversational AI actually represents the ultimate tip of the iceberg scenario. In this episode, Greg Johnsen and Greg Kefer cover the history and evolution of the build vs. buy debate and relate it to misperceptions about what is really required “below the waterline” to deliver an effective conversational experience with a consumer — one that considers flow patterns, persona, voice, agile development, journey mapping, and other design techniques that engage, satisfy, and deliver outcomes.

Many governments are racing to hire tens of thousands of contact tracers to control the spread of Coronavirus infections. Human call center agents would be tasked with tracking down, contacting, and interviewing individuals that were in contact with individuals that test positive. By many estimates this could involve the hiring and training of several hundred thousand people. While there is a need for human resourcefulness to investigate the various cases, the sheer numbers that will be required is an opportunity for technology. Unfortunately, most innovation strategies follow traditional call center models – making agents more efficient and maximize hourly throughput. What’s missing is the notion of driving 100x scale, without hiring 100x agents. In this episode of Digital Conversations, Greg Johnsen and Greg Kefer discuss the challenge contact tracing initiatives face. The massive hiring and training required begs for different thinking. Digital agents that can conduct thousands of simultaneous conversations, collect answers, provide answers, and support other basic interactions can replace scripted human agents and deliver unlimited capacity. 

The COVID-19 pandemic created an unprecedented surge of demand on emergency rooms around the world. Technology is playing a vital role in helping providers meet patient demand, while also complying with social distancing guidelines. Millions of non-COVID-19 patients still need to see their doctors, but will need to do so in different ways. Conversational chatbots that rose to the occasion during the early phases of the pandemic are now taking on additional functions, serving as digital assistants that help patients navigate their care. Like the challenges retailers are facing, the experience of visiting a doctor must change and chatbots have the potential to reinvent the entire process so it’s safe and efficient for everyone. In this episode, Greg Kefer and Greg Johnsen discuss the concept of virtual waiting rooms, where digital assistants help check patients in for telehealth and in-person appointments through mobile devices. Paper forms become digitized, patients are kept informed and providers can deliver a fast lane, direct-to -exam room experience for visits to clinics and offices. The concept of a waiting room filled with chairs and magazines may end up being a thing of the past, even after COVID-19 subsides. 

Supply chains are typically fairly rigid, well planned operations that are difficult to adjust quickly. As the COVID-19 pandemic spread, shortages in supplies have been well documented, with PPE for care teams being among the most pressing challenges. At Banner Health, their innovation group was asked to apply different thinking and find alternative ways to get vital supplies distributed and protect thousands of front line employees across their six state network of hospitals. Two former supply chain executives, Greg Kefer from LifeLink, and Steve Lindsey from Banner, connected and discussed some of the ways the Banner Innovation Group (BIG) helped secure masks, face shields, sanitizer, and other vital PPE materials, condensing procurement lead times from months to a few days. Some of the efforts involved cutting and gluing assembly lines, while others involved advanced digital printing. But all of it required outside the box thinking that fulfills the BIG charter of providing novel, untested ideas and products to benefit the whole healthcare industry.

Most healthcare providers have been operating in a state of constrained human resources for years. COVID-19 will put tremendous additional strain on those systems. Tens of thousands of concerned people could start flooding urgent care facilities for treatment, and technology will play a key role. Social distancing to keep staff healthy through remote telehealth screenings is one solution, but it doesn’t address the massive influx of volume that must be handled. In this episode, Greg Kefer and Justin Mardjuki discuss the early stage situation of the Coronavirus outbreak (March 2020) and what’s really needed to accomodate an unprecedented spike in demand. Hiring and training thousands of new employees is not a solution. But conversational technology can bridge the workforce gap, handling routine workflows such as screening, FAQ, and intake through mobile chatbots.

Healthcare communications to patients have always been a challenge. As a patient navigates a care plan, they encounter frustrating disconnects in the information they get from providers, labs, facilities, pharmacies, and payers. Frequently, a communication is delivered to the patient and then dates change, locations shift, new instructions arise, or new authorizations are required. Sometimes, the information in the original information goes obsolete before the patient even sees it.   Jacob Heitler sat down with Greg Kefer to discuss the ongoing challenge of static information in healthcare and how advances in mobile technology have matured. Static notifications can be enhanced with dynamic data, which in turn ensures patients only see the latest, most up-to-date information when they interact with the solution. This single version of the truth information model gives conversational technology exceptional power.

Patients and providers utilize medical information desks to get answers to common questions about prescription medicines and report potential adverse events. Typically, these inquiries have been handled through call centers or websites with dense, hard-to-navigate Q&A grids. Current approaches are also expensive and ineffective due to tight content controls and regulations. At the same time, consumer expectations have changed, which is challenging the old med info desk model. In this episode, Greg Kefer and Justin Mardjuki discuss alternatives to the “traditional” med info desk approach. Technology that is conversational, on-demand, always available, and connected to robust engagement analytics are maturing and offer the pharma industry a new and better way to share and collect information about their drugs.

The concept of liquid expectations is based on the natural comparisons consumers make between great and weak experiences. As consumers ratchet up their use of advanced digital tech to shop, travel, and do their banking, the comparisons to healthcare are increasingly common. The hospital digital front door is the closest thing healthcare has to an ecommerce site and consumers want booking appointments to be as easy as buying shoes. But it’s not.  In this episode, Justin Mardjuki and Greg Kefer discuss the challenges and opportunities healthcare providers face in delivering a seamless appointment request experience. While the industry may be years behind Marriott or Open Table, there may be a perfect storm opportunity for hospitals to leap ahead to the next consumer technology curve, leverage all the learnings from the first two waves of e-commerce, and deliver a mobile, conversational experience that helps patients navigate from a website front door to scheduled appointments, through referrals, prescriptions, and beyond. That’s what consumers expect and it’s worth millions of dollars in incremental revenue.

Emergency departments inside the urban core of America’s biggest cities face an enormous challenge. The acute healthcare “grids” are operating in a state of resource constraint, while the flow of patients keeps increasing. The physicians and clinical teams in the ED must deal with the supply and demand mismatch every day. In this episode, Greg Johnsen sat down with Scott Campbell, Attending Emergency Physician at Kaiser San Francisco, and President of San Francisco Emergency Physicians Association, to discuss some of the issues that exist at the intersection of public policy and public health. Scott also shares his opinions on the role of technology when it comes to getting the right person to the right bed with the right care every time — something that cannot be solved with just a bricks and mortar solution. 

When it comes to next-gen innovation, discussions typically tend to be academic and conceptual. Sometimes, it’s insightful to hear from the client managers who run the implementations and are responsible for ensuring the cool new technology works. This kind of real-world, feet-on-the-street perspective, based on actual experiences, is often eye opening. In this episode of Digital Conversations, Greg Kefer was joined by Kelly How, who shared a dose of interesting chatbot reality with us. Kelly is a client services manager who leads conversational technology projects at several large hospitals and pharmaceutical companies.  As part of the discussion, we touched on a few topics: Conversational chatbots vs. traditional technology project dynamics A new class of A/B testing for optimizing patient engagement Conversation-level behavioral insights and their impact on ROI and NPS

Conversational technology promises to deliver a next level step towards simplicity and engagement for healthcare patients. On the surface, the conversational interfaces perform as simple, smart interfaces between machines and humans. Seamless, intuitive interactions that deliver results are powered by large technology platforms behind the scenes. In this episode of Digital Conversations, Greg Kefer sat down with Gabe Hamilton, a platform engineer, to discuss some of the requirements to power millions of conversations with patients in the complex, regulated healthcare industry. Overall, there could be billions of total conversations, but that number will be made up of countless ‘small’ and specific interactions between providers and patients, and that requires a unique technology stack.

It’s a known fact that most IT projects will deliver ROI if implemented properly. Typically cost savings through automation and operational efficiency are a big part of any IT value story. As a new class of conversational technology matures, the healthcare industry value prize is moving beyond the traditional back office and into the patient experience, and that translates into a number of interesting new opportunities. Justin Mardjuki joined Greg Kefer in the Digital Conversations studio to talk about chatbot value.  In what is developing into a win-win-win scenario for healthcare providers, conversational bots are beginning to deliver across a number of promising value areas. From call center optimization, to adherence, to hospital patient experiences, this podcast will describe some of the ways chatbots are expanding the scope of value generation in unexpected new dimensions.

A Digital Conversations podcast discussion with Steve Lindsey from Banner Innovation Group In healthcare, high complexity combined with an extreme amount of regulatory red tape frequently hinder innovation and progress. Despite significant investments in technology, the industry continues to struggle implementing solutions that patients will understand and embrace.    At the same time, more than 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 each day and that is adding tremendous strains on Medicare and Medicaid programs. Innovation will be key, but there are big hurdles in getting elderly patients to engage with modern technology.     Grandmother-friendly IT? How many times have we heard something like this: “It has to be simple and intuitive in order to work. If my grandmother can’t understand it, it will never work.” If the goal is to engage Medicare patients with technology, grandmother MUST be able to figure it out. Banner Health sought to find a solution that its population of medicare seniors could embrace as part of their annual wellness visit -- a CMS program designed to keep patients engaged with their physicians on a regular basis. As part of the program, patients are required to fill out daunting questionnaires about their health. The process is cumbersome, frequently resulting in  high dissatisfaction rates, missed appointments and frustrated clinical teams. The Banner Innovation Group (BIG) had experienced success with LifeLink-powered patient engagement chatbots in their Emergency Departments. They were mobile, simple and intuitive. Would seniors embrace an advanced solution like a conversational chatbot to help streamline the annual wellness visit experience?    Breakthrough Operational Value and Engagement with Medicare Seniors In this episode of Digital Conversations, Greg Kefer was joined by Steve Lindsey, Program Director of Operations at Banner Innovation Group, to discuss how they transitioned their medicare annual wellness visit patients from clunky paper forms to conversational chatbots. Patients interacted with a conversational bot to complete their Health Risk Assessment prior to their annual annual wellness visit. The results were significant.    51% of patients interacted with the bot after cold outreach, with no advanced warning The completion rate was nearly 100% … if they started, they completed the process Providers could enter/review HRA data before appointment Among the patients that used the bot to complete their HRAs, Banner saw a 70% decrease in appointment cancellation rates They were also cancelling appointments less often If they did cancel, they did it 5 days earlier so the slots could be filled Banner is now rolling the HRA bot across more 30,000 medicare patients Steve also describes the Banner Innovation Group vision of anticipating future needs, designing solutions that create that model of healthcare, and how mobile chatbots fit into that picture.

When dealing with any kind of cardiac procedure, personal physician-patient interactions and relationships are key. But even in the cardiovascular medicine domain, there are opportunities to augment patient communications with modern technology.  Ahmad Sheikh, one of the country’s premiere cardiac surgeons, sat down with Greg Kefer to provide a physician perspective on patient engagement technology. While the deep, important conversations about treatment are not suitable for automation, there is potential for technology to handle many of the routine “logistics” interactions related to a surgical procedure. In what could be the ultimate win-win-win scenario, time for in-person interactions can be increased while simultaneously delivering process efficiency and higher satisfaction. And, it doesn’t need to be as complex as heart surgery because chatbots use simple conversational messaging that resembles the natural, effortless encounters that patients have every day on their mobile phones with friends and family.

Clayton Christensen’s great book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, describes disruptors and the challenges incumbent companies face in keeping up with the new entrant’s rate of improvement.  Even great companies struggle because they are good at the wrong things. Many don’t survive. The healthcare industry is in the midst of massive change, fueled by new innovation, changing regulations, and millions of aging baby boomers. Successful consumer-centric companies such as Amazon, Uber, Apple and CVS have entered the market with proven customer engagement strategies powered by advanced mobile technology. In this episode, Greg Johnsen and Greg Kefer discuss the challenges healthcare companies face today and how their innovation mindset must evolve to engage on consumer terms, not the providers’ terms. Today’s patients are consumers and they’re using advanced mobile technology to manage things like travel, transportation, and shopping and that influences their healthcare experience perception. If the industry is serious about engaging patients, it must evolve.

After decades of investment in digital systems of record, patients are beginning to navigate healthcare on their PCs and mobile devices. Providers have created great, consumer-grade technology for a better patient experience — a digital “superhighway” for healthcare. But patient adoption of these systems is still low. Healthcare is complex, there’s no way around that, but poor adoption rates indicate that leaders may have overestimated what consumers are willing to put up with. Technology adoption is never easy, but there may be hope. In this episode of Digital Conversations, Greg Johnsen and Greg Kefer discuss the rise of conversational technology that engages through language instead of menus and rigid workflows to deliver intuitive, consumer experiences at scale. Leveraging the patient digital information stored in EHR and CRM systems of record puts patients on a personalized, high-value path to high satisfaction and efficiency.

Since 1995, the annual Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) surveys have been used to measure patient experiences in Healthcare. Results are also used to determine Medicare reimbursements for providers. With the surveys being administered as much as 90 days after a visit, utilizing manual approaches (mail, phone, email), survey response rates are on the decline. This has introduced an element of non-response bias, according to a study published in the journal Patient Experience. In addition to all of this, the consumer dimension is evolving rapidly in healthcare.   Justin Mardjuki joined Greg Kefer in the Digital Conversations studio to discuss the shifting dynamics of surveys, specifically in the hospital environment, where HCAHPS scores can influence significant financial rewards or penalties. New mobile technology has the ability to measure sentiment in real time, as care is being delivered. Consumers are becoming fluent in providing peer reviews on platforms like Amazon, Uber, and Yelp, and maybe the time has come to rethink the CHAPS survey model.