Digital Conversations

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.