Digital Conversations – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Recent advancements in AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) have caught the world’s attention and for good reason. It’s a big deal. 

Specialty pharmaceuticals are typically costly, sometimes ranging from $10,000 to over $5 million per patient, per year. The onboarding and approval process that come with these drugs are complex, requiring extensive effort from manufacturers and patients to get enrolled. Despite massive investments in people, processes, and systems, engagement remains a struggle for all.

In this episode of Digital Conversations, Greg Johnsen and Greg Kefer discuss the implications of bringing conversational technology to the specialty pharma industry and how digital assistants use smart, compliant language to interact with patients and guide them along their journeys from prescription moment to program enrollment to first fill, and beyond.

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.

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.