HLTH 2022 Takeaways: What it really means to build an all-encompassing healthcare solution
At HLTH 2022, one of the country's most popular healthcare conferences, we shared the floor with a handful of innovative companies who are leveraging technology to improve care efficiency and the patient experience, maximize provider output, and much more. It was a reminder of how far we've come technologically in recent years and how bright the future is.
Simultaneously, it was a visible reminder that modern care solutions need to be future-proof, adaptable, and built to scale into the future as operations, regulations, and technology continue to change. As an industry we historically haven't been so good at that. At DeepScribe, we've often quipped that the moment clinicians become comfortable with one solution, the closer they are to its next iteration. It's a bit of a wry outlook, but there is some truth in that statement.
On the whole, healthcare seems to exist in this precarious limbo state between future and past. On one hand, modern medicine and patient care is as advanced as it’s ever been. Lead scientists created powerful and effective COVID-19 mRNA vaccines in less than 12 months. New Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy treatments are showing positive signs of being able to improve symptoms and quality of life and potentially slow progression. Suddenly, a cancer vaccine doesn't seem like a pipe dream. Yet, at the same time, healthcare administration is still largely a manual endeavor and is the root cause of some of the industry’s most alarming trends — burnout, attrition, and misdiagnosis. Operationally it often feels healthcare is at least 20 years behind other industries. For an industry that's on the cutting edge in so many ways, how is that possible?
In part, private healthcare all but ensures that each care organization adopts different tools and solutions to address their niche problems and unique patient population. As a result, healthcare data within these private systems is often left completely unstructured and in silos that can't be externally accessed or leveraged. This creates an ecosystem that is fragmented and inefficient, which inhibits the advancement of care and promotes a problem oriented digital health-tech market. In short, healthcare likes to band-aid rather than devoting the time, research, and cross-functional alignment necessary to produce proper solutions.
What results is an industry that is scrambling to keep up, but is perpetually stuck in the past running arcane tools with old methods and poor data management. More explicitly, the result is that 20 year gap.
That's unacceptable.
At DeepScribe, we are leveraging AI, natural language processing and machine learning to take a solution-focused approach to medical documentation. Through a secure mobile app downloaded on a clinicians device, DeepScribe ambiently captures the clinical conversation, autonomously extracts the important medical information, and uses it to write complete notes directly within the EHR. The ambient nature of DeepScribe means there's no distracting dictation, manual note-taking or third party medical scribe to intrude on the visit. Clinicians can simply focus on providing care while DeepScribe takes care of the documentation.
DeepScribe allows providers to be more focused, more attentive and more energized because they no longer have to spend hours during or after clinic documenting notes. It allows patients to feel more heard and receive better care. And it allows organizations to optimize reimbursement, increase patient throughput, reduce attrition and much more. In this sense, DeepScribe is reimagining documentation in a way that impacts every branch of the healthcare tree. The phrase we often use is "all-encompassing," because it encapsulates not only our documentation solution, but how we approach problem solving.
The reality is, however, if our quest for an all-encompassing solution stopped in the exam room, we'd simply be doing exactly what the healthcare industry has been doing for the last 75 years — create a solution that works, wait for it to be arbitraged out, use it for 20 years longer than it should, then let it become become a clinical burden and eventually obsolete.
No.
DeepScribe won't be yet another band-aid solution because since the very beginning we've taken a solution approach and built forward thinking models that lay the foundation for a bright and healthy future. Because to us, "all-encompassing" means revolutionizing healthcare through data. By demolishing the silos and centralizing, structuring, labeling and using data, we can deliver sustainable, efficient, and equitable long-term solutions at scale. And we are well on our way.
Currently, DeepScribe is collating the largest structured clinical dataset in healthcare. Meaning that while we are helping clinicians automate documentation, save time, and alleviate burnout, we are simultaneously building the long-term framework for Voice and AI in healthcare. From clinical decision support to diagnosis through voice and much more, the applications of this structured dataset is a powerful prospect — one that positions us at the forefront of "all-encompassing" healthcare innovation.
Admittedly, it’s not always an easy task. Disrupting the status quo and reimagining how things work takes extreme effort and patience, especially in an industry like healthcare. We have to work fast, but must also be thoughtful and calculated in our approach. We have to think independently to solve complex problems, but must rely on teamwork and collaboration to reach collective answers. Ultimately, we have to care more than others. And that we do.
