Can an AI voice agent make surgery day smoother — without losing the human touch? In this episode of Innovate Health, OHSU shares how it became the first health system in the country to launch an agentic AI patient-reminder call for surgical patients — cutting procedure cancellations by roughly 50% while freeing staff for higher-value work.

⚠️ Content warning: This episode includes a brief discussion of self-harm and suicidal ideation. If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 (U.S.) to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

In this episode:

• Why pre-op reminder calls are so labor-intensive — and how AI reduces last-minute surgery cancellations

• How OHSU co-developed a human-in-the-loop voice agent with escalation to real staff (plus a real-time 988 safety escalation)

• What patients actually think: satisfaction ratings, generational differences, and English vs. Spanish calls

• How freeing schedulers from repetitive calls lets them work at the top of their license

• What's next: medication reconciliation, ambulatory reminders, and post-op calls

Guests: Dio Sumagaysay, Vice President of Perioperative & Multi-Specialty Procedural Services at OHSU (returning guest); and Kristen Lund, RN, Director of the Pre-op Medicine Clinic and OR Scheduling Groups at OHSU, who led the project. Hosted by Dr. Ani Chintalapani and Dr. Tammy Wagner.

Topics covered: agentic AI in healthcare, AI patient reminder calls, reducing surgery cancellations, perioperative operations, patient experience, conversational voice AI, multilingual (Spanish) patient outreach, healthcare workforce.

Timestamps:

00:00:00 Introduction & guest welcome

00:03:00 The problem: why pre-op calls are hard

00:05:44 Before AI: MyChart, texts & manual calls

00:09:00 How the agentic voice agent works

00:11:33 Escalations, dashboards & human handoff

00:12:33 Building trust: augment, not replace

00:16:17 Stress-testing the agent for failure points

00:18:25 A surprise: suicide-risk escalation to 988

00:19:55 Why the AI voice feels human (generational gaps)

00:21:15 How patients reacted: satisfaction ratings

00:24:14 Evolving the script from patient feedback

00:25:20 Results: 50% fewer cancellations

00:28:01 Freeing staff for higher-value work

00:29:24 What's next: med reconciliation and post-op calls

00:32:41 Closing thoughts and why OHSU leads

Links and resources:

Innovate Health podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/innovate-health/id1872730471

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: https://988lifeline.org/

How does a promising discovery in a research lab actually become a company, a licensed product, or a clinical tool patients can use? In this episode of Innovate Health, Dr. Aditi Martin, Senior Director for Collaborations and Entrepreneurship at OHSU, breaks down how OHSU Innovates helps researchers, clinicians, and students turn early-stage ideas into partnerships, startups, and market-ready innovations — and why entrepreneurship doesn't have to be a lonely journey.

In this episode:

• Inside OHSU Innovates: how partnership development, startup formation, and gap funding work together to support academic entrepreneurship

• Real success stories — from a nerve-imaging surgical technology (Trace Biosciences) to a biodegradable neurosurgical clip (NeuraMedica)

• How the Biomedical Innovation Program and the I-Corps-based Commercialization Readiness Program de-risk the path from idea to market

• Why "the earlier, the better" is the golden rule for connecting with OHSU's innovation and technology transfer teams

• Guest credential: Dr. Martin is a pharmacologist by training who spent seven years at Johns Hopkins Tech Ventures before joining OHSU in 2015 to lead its growing innovation ecosystem

Guest: Dr. Aditi Martin, Senior Director for Collaborations and Entrepreneurship at OHSU. A pharmacologist by training (Virginia Commonwealth University), Dr. Martin spent seven years at Johns Hopkins Tech Ventures in business development, licensing, and patent analysis before joining OHSU in 2015 to help build out its innovation and entrepreneurship programming.

Topics covered: academic entrepreneurship, technology transfer, biomedical innovation funding, healthcare startups, industry-academia partnerships, commercialization readiness

Timestamps:

02:05 Dr. Martin's path to OHSU and what OHSU Innovates is

05:14 Partnership development — the first pillar of Collaborations & Entrepreneurship

07:07 Cultivating startups from university IP — the second pillar

08:53 The Biomedical Innovation Program: gap funding for early-stage ideas

09:50 The I-Corps-based Commercialization Readiness Program

11:59 Push vs. pull — how researchers and innovators connect with the program

13:58 Success story: Trace Biosciences' nerve-imaging technology

15:42 Success story: NeuraMedica's bioabsorbable surgical clip

17:16 When to reach out — "the earlier, the better"

20:03 How OHSU Innovates defines success: metrics, ROI, and repeat innovators

24:07 Navigating risk and the culture shift toward innovation at OHSU

26:41 Coaching researchers through commercialization anxiety

30:56 Overcoming early resistance through relationship building

34:49 What's next: on-campus startup space and expanded ecosystem partnerships

36:51 How to get started — contact info, newsletter, and the annual impact report

Links & Resources Mentioned:

OHSU Innovates — https://www.ohsu.edu/innovates

OHSU Collaborations and Entrepreneurship — https://www.ohsu.edu/innovates/collaborations-and-entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurial Education Programs — https://www.ohsu.edu/innovates/entrepreneurial-education-programs

OHSU Startup Companies — https://www.ohsu.edu/collaborations-and-entrepreneurship/ohsu-startups

Contact Dr. Martin's team: [email protected]

How do you staff 15+ operating rooms a day without burning out your best nurses? OHSU's Dio Sumagaysay and Taryn Tomlinson explain how an AI-powered staffing optimization tool ended "hero staffing," cut hours of manual scheduling, and lifted care consistency across their perioperative teams.

In this episode:

• How OHSU's perioperative team moved beyond "hero staffing" and siloed scheduling knowledge held by individual service coordinators
• Inside IQ Staff Planner: the AI tool that auto-assigns OR staff by case history and competency, built in partnership with LeanTaaS
• Real outcomes: 25 hours a week of service coordinator time redirected to patient care, a 5-minute average drop in case duration, and a 30% increase in care consistency
• How OHSU built staff trust in AI by co-designing the tool with frontline service coordinators and charge nurses instead of imposing it top-down

Guests: Dio Sumagaysay, Vice President of Perioperative Services at OHSU (overseeing multi-specialty procedural areas including cath lab, IR, and endoscopy), with the organization for almost 17 years. Taryn Tomlinson, Assistant Nurse Manager for the operating rooms at OHSU Center for Health and Healing, with OHSU since 2019.

Topics covered: AI staffing optimization, operating room scheduling, perioperative workforce management, healthcare AI adoption, OR staffing shortages, LeanTaaS IQ Staff Planner

Timestamps:

[00:00] Welcome to Innovate Health: meet Dio Sumagaysay and Taryn Tomlinson

[04:02] The old way: "hero staffing" and siloed OR knowledge

[07:51] Why OHSU piloted IQ Staff Planner

[12:39] Inside the 8-year LeanTaaS partnership

[16:14] How the tool works: case-history "signal bars"

[19:41] Inside auto-assign: AI-matched daily staffing

[23:02] Addressing fears: will AI replace OR staff?

[25:50] The results: 25 hours reclaimed, 30% more consistency

[28:17] Culture change: from paper whiteboards to AI dashboards

[34:24] What's next: main OR, anesthesia, and surgeon optimization

Links & Resources Mentioned

• OHSU Anesthesiology & Perioperative Medicine — Services
• OHSU Center for Health and Healing, South Waterfront Campus
• OHSU's Approach to AI in Patient Care
• Lean Enterprise Institute
• John Shook, Lean Enterprise Institute
• Back to the Patient - How AI Scribe is Changing the Visit

Can an AI scribe give clinicians their attention back? Two OHSU primary care physicians explain how ambient AI clinical documentation actually works in the exam room — how OHSU selected its AI scribe, what the data shows on documentation time and burnout, how patient consent works, and where the technology still needs a human in the loop.

In this episode:

- How OHSU ran a 12-vendor RFP and a 100-clinician crossover pilot instead of buying the most convenient tool.

- Why chart closure time dropped to roughly half of what it was — and why replacing a burned-out primary care physician takes over a year and several hundred thousand dollars.

- How clinicians ask patients for consent, what happens when a patient says no, and why consent is re-obtained at every visit.

- Where AI scribes still fall short: verbalizing the physical exam, speaker diarization in family and pediatric visits, and clinical language like "poorly controlled".

- Data privacy specifics — recordings deleted after 30 days, transcripts never entering the medical record, and vendors contractually barred from training on patient data.

- The open question in medical education: if AI drafts the note, where do residents build their differential?

Hosts: Ani Chintalapani, M.D., and Tammy Wagner, M.D.,F.A.A.P., Associate Chief Health Information Officers at OHSU.

Guests: Tim Joslin, M.D., family medicine physician, medical director of OHSU Family Medicine at South Waterfront and associate residency director, who has been at OHSU for 22 years and co-led the AI scribe evaluation from 2023. Brian Ricce, M.D., internal medicine and primary care physician of 15 years at OHSU, an early AI scribe adopter who now uses it in nearly every visit.

Topics covered: AI scribe, ambient clinical documentation, physician burnout, EHR documentation burden, clinical informatics, patient consent for AI, Epic

Chapters:

00:00:00 Introduction and Guest Bios

00:04:01 Documentation Burden Before AI

00:09:46 How OHSU Chose Abridge

00:13:50 Burnout, Retention, and Metrics

00:17:31 AI Scribe in Practice

00:20:27 Errors, Hallucinations, and Language

00:22:38 Explaining AI to Patients

00:26:07 Inside a Scribe Visit

00:31:44 Data Privacy and Retention

00:34:28 Future Tools and Learners

Links and resources: abridge.com | OHSU Primary Care at South Waterfront, ohsu.edu/primary-care/ohsu-primary-care-clinic-south-waterfront | "The Cost of Technology," Elizabeth Toll, JAMA 2012, doi.org/10.1001/jama.2012.4946 | More Innovate Health episodes, podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/innovate-health/id1872730471

Innovate Health is a production of ITG Clinical Informatics and Strategic Communications. Produced by Meeka Kullberg.

#AIScribe #AmbientAI #HealthcareAI #PhysicianBurnout #ClinicalInformatics #DigitalHealth #HealthIT #EHR #PrimaryCare #MedEd