Shift Forward HealthSam Seering returns to dive deep on Epic’s recent announcement about working with Microsoft to integrate generative AI into its EHR for the first time. In this exclusive interview, Sam dives deep into what this development could mean for consumers, as well as some use cases that could make healthcare marketers very happy.
All that, plus the Flava of the Week about Apple’s reported new health coaching service. How does their new service work, and can we change the narrative to encourage more innovation that includes prevention?
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New choices, new platforms, new care models and the health care of tomorrow, consumers win. But who will design it? What will it look like and how long will it take? We are here to answer those questions with some provocative thinking about how to create the health care that people actually want. Ready to roll up your sleeves, Look at the world a little differently and explore the frontiers of consumer health together. Join us. This is the health care wrap. Welcome back. I'm Jared Johnson from Shift forward Health. And here's what's going to go down today. We have the flavor of the week about Apple's reported new health coaching service. How does their new service work and can we change the narrative to encourage more innovation that includes prevention? I'll talk about that then. We welcome Sam searing back to the show to dive deep on Epic's recent announcement about partnering with Microsoft to integrate generative AI into its for the first time. In this exclusive interview, Sam dives deep into what this development could mean for consumers, as well as some use cases that could make health care marketers very happy. It's time to dive right in. Are you ready? Let's go. Flavor of the week. Apple continues to remind us that there's more to our health than just sick care. Their latest report, Adventure in Health, is a plan to offer an AI powered health coaching service. According to Bloomberg, Apple is developing the coaching service to help users stay motivated to exercise, improve their eating habits and sleep better. The idea is to use AI and information from a user's Apple Watch to develop coaching programs specially tailored for them. As with Apple's other services, the Health Coaching Service is expected to have a monthly fee. The service is planned for next year, but they also say it could be postponed or shelved altogether. Interestingly, the same article says that Apple is working on technology for tracking emotions and plans to roll out an iPad version of the iPhone health app. This year, Apple's health app will be getting tools for tracking emotions and managing vision conditions such as nearsightedness. The launch version of the Emotion Tracker will allow users to log their mood and answer questions about their day and compare their results over time in the future. Apple reportedly hopes the Mood tracker will be able to use algorithms to understand the user's mood based on their speech, text and other data. Now, the headline for me isn't necessarily these new services, although it's interesting to consider the benefits of integrating them within existing hardware such as Apple watches and iPads. But I also think it's good to periodically come up for air and lift our eyes above the day to day complexities of the sick care system to see what's possible. I'm hearing executives at every level and every type of organization discuss the move to health, moving beyond treatment toward true whole person health and wellness. There's a short sighted belief out there that there's no money in prevention, that the only worthwhile innovation is to find new ways to treat us once we're sick. But I've heard personally from executives in health systems across the country that they want to innovate in ways that are good for both their bottom line and our overall health and well-being. That's why they're exploring value based care, hospital sponsored health plans and coaching services of their own. And that's why we profiled consumer disruptors on this show to tell their story to the innovators and change makers out there. Let's find ways to tell the story bigger, faster and louder so we can steer more leaders and dollars towards innovations that include prevention. That's another way that we'll build the health care of tomorrow, and that's the flavor of the week.
The flow. The flow. The flow.
All right, everyone, let's get back into the flow. Give it up again for Sam Searing. He's a product manager for Epic. Cheers, Sam. Welcome back to the health care app.
Great to be back, Jared, always a pleasure to join you on the health care wrap.
I'm serious. You know, it's one of these things I like to tell people they can take it as a badge of honor when they're a return guest, not just because it's a smaller group of guests, but, you know, I like to think we're giving a lot for our listeners, a lot of value there. And it just gives them a chance to get to know you better, which always starts with a good place of introduction. Last time I had you on pretty recently, we had a great discussion about Epic Cheers and gave kind of an inside tour there. It's always fun to see people in person. When you and I were able to reconnect at home in person, I noticed something really cool about the Epic booth and it was really unique. I guess I've just been involved in marketing long enough. I've seen a lot of booths here and there. This is the first one I've seen with the decor of your booth. Would you mind describing that for those who didn't happen to be there in person and experience it?
Yeah, absolutely. Jared Here at Epic, we have we have kind of one of our corporate philosophies is do good, have fun and make money. And so very much the booth that we bring to different conferences is very much in that. Have fun vein. So for those of you who are unfamiliar here at Epic, we are in Verona, Wisconsin, just outside of Madison, and we actually originally all of our land was Wisconsin farming land. And so we took that as inspiration for the artwork and design of the booth that we have. So we have pictures of cows and pigs. We have a little rooster statue that's that's part of our booth. So it's really kind of infusing that, that element of fun and a little bit of history of epic into into that booth. But what I really.
Loved is that it felt authentic, right? It wasn't trying to be trendy with it. It was trying to just be authentic about it. And I think that's actually what really worked there. So there's not a lot of times I ask people to describe their booths for me. So just just know that that was something that stood out that was great.
I'll make sure to share that with our events team. They they do an excellent job at helping us out and really shared our message.
Outstanding. All right. Well, so, Sam, that gives us an opportunity now just to dive in a little bit deeper in terms of getting to know you a little better, what would you like our listeners to know about you personally and professionally?
Yeah. So just to share some of the things maybe from from last time as well. Been an epic now at for ten years started off working in our analytics division, helping organizations get value out of their data. And I had the pleasure at that time to start getting to work on patient experience. And so that's what led me now into my work at CRM here at Epic, where I work across all of our different teams from research and development to quality assurance to implementation, to ongoing technical support, to make sure that our community members are as successful as possible, maintaining and building their relationships with their patient populations, using our CRM capabilities when it comes outside of the professional life. I've got two young boys, three and one right now that definitely are the reason that I wake up early in the morning is to make sure that they're getting out the door and definitely love to be able to cook for my family and be able to do different outdoor activities with them. So a little bit more on the on the personal side. Very nice.
Love knowing just a little bit about that and awesome to have a couple of boys there in the family in the household. So a lot of fun Sounds like in life there.
I'm going to need your recommendations and advice as as they're getting older. Jared Well, as.
Soon as I figure the parenting thing out, I'll let you know there. We could go on all day there. But one other thing I've been asking a lot lately, which is really interesting to hear how people address this question, but I'm just curious. We've been asking about what a good piece of career advice is that people have received along the way. And it's been interesting hearing just from different standpoints, people at different parts of their career journeys. But there's always something or multiple things that have stood like stuck with people along the way. Is there something that comes to mind when I say like, Hey, what's one of those pieces of career advice that's just stuck with you?
Yeah, that's an interesting one. Jared I think for me, the best advice that I was ever given was be the best version of you possible. So of course in in corporate environments, you always want to be comparing yourself against the guy across the hallway or the girl who works at at another company. But it's very traditional way of thinking of improving yourself. And so that's why the advice of being the best version of you was so impactful for me, because it allows me to refocus my work on just being better. Than who I was yesterday. So it really helps me focus on kind of that internal improvement without needing to feel the need to put down others in in the work that they're doing, because the same advice is true for them. They should be the best version of them possible as well. Individual success is not dependent on the failure of another. Yeah.
Oh, that's such a good piece of advice here. And I like to just think team building in that way of recognizing everyone has a part to play and it's a different part for every single person. And so when you think about in the way you just described, it allows you the freedom and the empowerment, hopefully in someone's environment to be able to play that part to the best of their abilities. And so realizing that there is strength in that diversity of a team, it's just go such a long way. Love that. So good. Okay, so so Sam, want to dig in here a little bit with you because there's been some news out there, to say the least. But a lot of people were talking about was on the first day of hims here, because Epic made a big splash when they announced that that they're working with Microsoft to integrate generative AI into its software for the first time. Let's dig into the syllabus. What can you tell us about the announcement?
Yeah. So as or as folks probably saw a couple of weeks ago at Hims, we announced that we were embedding GPT technology generative AI technology directly into the epic platform. And we were actually live with two organizations in production with generative AI use cases for healthcare. So that would be UW Health here in Madison. And then UC San Diego were the two groups who were first live on this actually where we embedded generative AI into the in basket workflow for clinicians. So for those folks who are unaware of what basket is, it's basically when you send your doctor a message through my chart, that is where that message lands. And it's really been over the course of the last few years as MyChart adoption has grown, particularly because health systems were pushing patients into digital channels of engagement because of the pandemic, this message volume has continued to increase to the point that now there is in basket fatigue for clinicians. So what we did as part of this project is the generative AI capability takes a first pass at that piece of content. So it reviews the message that was sent in, classifies the type of message. Is it about a medication, Is it about an appointment, is it about a laboratory result? And then it shares pertinent information from Epic through a HIPAA compliant API to the GPT service within Microsoft's platform and then drive drafts a response for that clinician. And that's actually where the generative AI stops, because one of our principles of deploying this generative AI ethically is making sure that a human being always has the chance to review and confirm the message and the content before sending it. Because as folks know that have been tracking this generative AI space, these models sometimes have a propensity of creating false information or what's known in the industry as hallucinating some pieces of information. And so it was a core tenet for us that a clinician, the person who's actually going to be responding back to the patient, actually is reviewing the content before sending it out.
So how is that different than I think some of us probably obvious, but how is that different than the process historically in terms of not having a tool to to make any of the process easier? Sure.
So historically, what doctors needed to do when a message got delivered to their in basket is they needed to first review the message and then go into the patient's record. So if it's a questions about medications going into the patient's record to review, are they currently on that medication? How long have they been on the medication? What condition are they actually treating with that medication? And then absorb all of that information, go back and then write the response back to the individual. Now, the system, the generative AI and the epic system are doing all of that review process, removing that honestly administrative burden from the clinician and drafting that response for them, saving that time in the first place. The interesting thing as well. There is actually a study in Jama just here recently that analyzed medical advice, both from that was provided by a clinician and then provided by ChatGPT is what they used for this study. And they they were reviewing Reddit questions, not in basket questions, but it's an interesting corollary. And they actually found that through a a blind panel review process that ChatGPT was more empathetic to the individuals when they were responding to the question that they have. And so it's interesting. There might be other ways to infuse a better patient experience through providing that draft response because the doctor may not have time, even though they want to be empathetic, they may not take the time to actually write that out. Whereas if a draft is provided for them, they don't need to spend that time. That information is already there for them to.
Stay tuned for more provocative thinking after the break.
Consumer demands, disruptive technologies and I are shaping health care for years to come. On the Hello Healthcare podcast, we dive deep on these issues with leaders who are driving change. These stories will inspire you to create and demand a better future in health care. Learn more at hello Healthcare. Com. And now back to the show.
I see. Yeah, that's quite an evolution there. Well, I know we like to look at headlines like this, big announcements through the consumer's lens as well. But what do you think this development means for consumers especially? We can just use that same use case of in basket messages, which ends up answering that's engagement with the patient or consumer at the end of the day. What do you think this this development could mean for consumers who are out there asking for an easier experience? They just want everything to be a little simpler and how they engage with the health system. What are the possibilities here?
I mean, I think it's just simply going to make that experience for the clinician in taking the in basket example here, it's going to be making it easier for them to actually get through the volume so that patients can get a quick response to whatever sort of clinical need that they might have. Now, of course, we work with our community members to try to automate or provide self-service options for these capabilities as much as possible. But at the end of the day, sometimes it just requires a clinician to do it. And so if we can speed up that process and that patient, that consumer can get a quicker response and then have that peace of mind, of whatever that response is, that's where I see that benefit of having a more pro-consumer first approach to providing that messaging.
Well, you know, I'm going to support that. I think any step in this direction is a good one. And think being able to to sit here and say like, that's the goal. That's part of this. Ideally, this also makes life easier for the clinician. I mean, that's always the goal here, right? I've I've known occasionally there's some pushback when we say how are we putting consumer's needs first because there's just this knee jerk reaction sometimes of of clinicians saying, well, does that mean my needs come last? And absolutely not. The goal here is to make the health care experience easier for consumers without making it harder for anyone else, including clinical teams. And so there is that sweet spot. It's just not talked about as much. And so may feel like this is moving in that direction towards that sweet spot, making it ideally easier for it for the clinician as well, for the care team. So I think it's fantastic there because that's what we're looking for. We're looking for just more more steps in this direction. So think it's great. Another audience that we talk about a lot here is marketers and I think there are major implications there as well. What do you think here mean? Feel like this is like a blue ocean here. This is a whole new realm of possibilities. Are there any use cases that could benefit marketers you could talk us through?
There's a lot kind of in this space. You're you're definitely right. This is kind of a a new green field moment for us as an industry to really take a leap forward and quite honestly align with what marketers outside of healthcare are grappling with as well. It's the same greenfield opportunity that they're dealing with, and there definitely are use cases that we're thinking about here at Epic of how marketers will be able to use generative AI to their benefit as well. So one of them that we are prototyping currently that we did actually share at Hims as well is creating a conversational interface to our self-service analytics capabilities in Epic. Now that may not sound like something that a marketer would immediately want to do because maybe it's more of a clinician wanting to have those conversations or a revenue cycle leader wanting to have those conversations with the data. But the use case that we're seeing from a marketers perspective is being able to have a conversation to identify who are qualified individuals that we should be engaging in outreach. So being able to simply ask how many individuals are overdue for their mammography and then find me those individuals that live in the zip code where we have available mammography volume and then split that out by individuals that have a family history of breast cancer so that we can target those more high priority individuals first. And all of that will be able to be done through text prompts. So you'll just be able to talk to your data to build these target segments that you are wanting to engage as a marketer. The other is in a pretty high, I guess high labor area for marketers is in content generation. Being able to let generative AI take a first pass at your content. So, for example, once I have that population of individuals that we want to come in for their mammography. Asking it to take a first draft of email content, mychart content and text message content. And then just like what we did with in Basket, providing that as a draft for a marketer to review that content before deploying out that engagement campaign. So those are a couple of the areas that we're we're thinking through of how generative AI could be used and where we see the benefit is because of that HIPAA compliant API that we are using, we can share additional information like an individual's appointment history, like the procedures that they've had in order to truly create that 1 to 1 personalization for that individual that we're reaching out to. I think the most important thing, Jared, goes back to that philosophy that we're taking from an ethical standpoint, that there still needs to be a human being in the loop as part of this work. And so that's why we're not just going to deploy a campaign with generative messaging straight out the door. We want to provide that opportunity for that marketer in order to actually review, make sure that it aligns with the brand messaging before then, sharing that with their target population.
Well, love that. It feels like it expands the menu, if you will, of ways that generative AI can benefit consumers at the end of the day. And if that happens in the background, for instance, and in ways that they don't even know, all they know is that they're getting responded to in a more timely manner, for instance, or just it's easier to get something happening, seeing some outreach come to them that they hadn't gotten before. That's being created in a way that if it's in the background, quite frankly, I think that's even more exciting because that's part of the consumer experience evolution, if you will. In other organizations outside of healthcare, is that there's actually not a focus on it. They're not marketing the fact that here's how we've built this. All they know is that like this experience is better. And so like, that's what the end user, the consumer, the patient ultimately cares about. And I think that's a that's just a perfect example there. What excites you the most about using new technologies like this in healthcare and their possibilities?
Boy, there's so many. Jared I would personally say there's there's the, there's the adage of in health care, of practicing at the top of your license and most of the time that's talking about nurses on the floor in the hospital or doctors in the exam room. But marketers also have a top of their license. There is a skill set, but sometimes there are administrative tasks like copywriting, for example, that just have to get done. And so if we can use a tool like generative AI in order to alleviate some of those lower level tasks, it'll allows marketers to elevate themselves to be thinking more strategically for the organization in order to do things like guide conversations on creating a true consumer first healthcare experience, because that day to day work is now being elevated using that generative AI capability. So that's where I am really most excited about this, is that it's going to enable folks to do more and to be able to do the harder and more strategic things that is necessary to actually drive the consumer transformation that we all want to see in healthcare. And to your point, Jared, that you were talking about earlier, I really like to think of consumer transformation. The end state is creating magical consumer experiences and some of the best pieces of magic that you think about. You're just in all of the experience, but you had no clue how the magician actually did that trick. You just know that you were entertained and you had a great experience. I think the same could be true here is that the technology should just be in the background. It should just be creating these magical experiences and that the consumer, that the patient doesn't need to know what actually happened to make that magical experience a reality.
I agree. I agree. What about the flip side of that? What do you think are some of the greatest challenges with implementing these technologies?
I think it's going to be kind of on the other side of it is some groups have built themselves as this specific job function that generative AI is only going to continue to get better and better and better at. And so it's making sure that we bring along those. People because AI is not going to replace people. People who use AI are going to replace people who do not use AI. And so it's making sure that we're bringing these folks along so that they're also receiving the benefits of these new capabilities. And I think the other side of it is what kind of AI already discussed is that we want to make sure that we are deploying these tools in the right places so that we're not creating misinformed interactions. We don't want to be providing poor medical advice to an individual because a generative AI model hallucinated information because it doesn't actually know the truth at the end of the day. And so it's making sure that as a collective industry we are being deliberate where we are rolling out these capabilities so it doesn't negatively impact that patient care experience.
Well, I can't wait for one to see the the processes evolve to account for all of the things that can happen within and without the guardrails happening again. Just liken it to the process of getting healthcare organizations set up on social media for the first time. And this is, yeah, ten, 12, 15 years ago. And that was quite a process. The policies and guidelines were just tedious to come up with. It's funny, it's almost meta like now thinking of being able to use ChatGPT for instance, to create the guidelines and do the writing of the policy, at least take a first pass at it. That would be so meta. But I digress.
And there are so many ways that this is going to evolve. I mean, we weren't even talking about generative AI six months ago. It wasn't even a topic of conversation in healthcare, and now it's everything that everyone wants to be talking about. And so we're going to continue to see this evolve over time. The thing I'm really excited for is everything we've been talking about here has been text generation is what we've been talking about. But I think that the evolution that we're seeing in image generation and the kind of just budding capabilities in video generation is going to have massive implications. Maybe not this year, but over the next five years of how marketing departments are thinking about how they're building their content and how they're connecting with consumers.
Oh yeah, great, great thing to think about. Well, any final thoughts here, Sam? Anything else that you'd like to share with our listeners that we haven't mentioned yet?
I mean, it's always a pleasure. Jared joined the podcast and I think just the pieces that we've been talking about here is we're we're in the early stages of generative AI, and so it's making sure that we're all together being deliberate and moving in the right direction, but still keeping in mind that it's all about improving the consumer experience, the patient experience and the clinician experience.
Fantastic. Well, I know some of our listeners will want to connect with you and might have questions here. What's the best way for them to reach you?
Yeah, best way is through linked in. If you're looking for Sam searing on LinkedIn, just look for the one with the bow tie. Always happy to connect with folks and continue the conversation.
Outstanding. Well, that's a wrap for this episode. I've had the pleasure of speaking with Sam, searing from Epic. Thanks again for joining us today. Thanks for having me. Thanks for tuning in. If you like what you heard, please spread the word. Tell your colleagues to tune in for all the awesomeness, then leave a review on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen. This show is produced by Shift Forward Health, The Channel for Change Makers. Subscribe to Shift Forward Health on your favorite podcast app and you'll be subscribed to our entire library of shows. See our full lineup at Shift Forward Health one subscription all the podcasts you need and it's all for free. And remember, we might have a lot of work to do in health care, but we'll get there faster together. Thanks again.
