In this episode, Teri welcomes Sandeep Konam, the Co-Founder and CTO at Abridge, a healthcare and machine learning company.
Abridge creates AI-powered tools that empower patients to take control of their health stories. Sandeep is always excited to build products that positively impact the lives of people. He has great experience working at the intersection of machine learning and health. In the past, he has worked on enhancing perception capabilities of UAVs on multi-robot coordination, and was involved with several health-tech projects. Most recently, he worked on deep-learning-based autonomy for UAVs and developed techniques to make deep-learning algorithms interpretable. He is also the founder at KONAM Foundation where they build tech interventions to address challenges in agriculture and education.
Key points from Sandeep!
- How Abridge enables patients to record their conversations with their healthcare providers, and then have a log of what the encounter was about, using their own speech language and machine learning tech.
Getting into Voice
- He has been working at the intersection of machine learning and health for about seven years.
- Around 2016, he got interested in creating an oncology clinical trial matching platform, where oncologists and patients can easily find a list of clinical trials for eligible patients. Doctors, clinicians, and patients loved the idea, but data liquidity and integrations with EHR systems turned out to be an uphill battle.
- The fact that patients have no access or right to their data challenged Sandeep, and that is what formed the basis for the creation of Abridge’s technology.
- Abridge works towards helping patients capture, create, and curate their own healthcare data via audio recording.
How their Technology Works
- Patients use the Abridge platform to securely record, review, and share their clinical data.
- They tap a button in the app, and then record audio which is then encrypted and uploaded to the cloud for further machine learning processing.
- Once the audio is processed, they can quickly review it using clinical concepts that are highlighted by Abridge's machine learning pipeline. A patient can also keep their loved ones in the loop by sharing the recordings with them.
- Everything is powered by Abridge's in-house machine learning tech that has been built over time.
- They use different machine learning platforms in addition to their own to parse all the information being captured and synthesize it into a way that is succinct and summarized in a way that patients can benefit from.
Feedback from Patients and Clinicians
- They get very positive feedback from caregivers, doctors, clinicians, and patients. They have come forward and showed their appreciation for the app and talked about how it’s been transformational to them.
- Some clinicians appreciate that the patients can handle the recording part of their conversations where all they have to do is review the recordings. Doctor-Patient relationships have also improved because of this.
- He sees this form of recording healthcare data becoming the future trend.
- Physicians will sometimes request the recordings to put in their medical charts, but the decision lies solely on the patients.
Plans for a Clinician-focused Platform
- They believe they can provide value to clinicians, but in the short term, patients are their only focus.
Privacy and Security
- Privacy is a core principal that they abide by with their platform. Users own and control their data. If they deleted the data it’s deleted for good, and if they share it it’s shared. Abridge doesn’t sell any data.
- They use a state of the art encryption technique for security when a patient records audio all the way to the point where they get a summary of their recording.
HIPAA Compliance
- They have not necessarily altered the app for HIPAA Compliance, but they have checked off all the necessary boxes because they go above HIPAA Compliance in their data privacy and security processes.
- The fact that their app is patient-focused also means that they’re not necessarily required to have HIPAA Compliance.
The Future for Abridge
- They are constantly working on improving privacy and security.
- They’re also continuously enhancing their machine learning capabilities.
The Meaning of Voice First Health to Sandeep
- With the ongoing talk about voice as a biomarker that can be used to detect health issues, and talk about doctor burn out, he believes the right approach is working on giving patients a voice centered experience where they can capture the audio of their interactions with their doctors.
Links and Resources in this Episode
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