Revolutionizing Healthcare IT: Spikewell's AI-Driven Innovations for Patient Care and Management

Discover the revolutionary potential of healthcare IT as we explore the transformative journey of Spikewell. What if healthcare could prioritize wellness over wealth? This bold philosophy is at the heart of Spikewell's mission, with roots steeped in the technological innovations of the finance world. Together, we dive into the challenges hospitals face today and how Spikewell is partnering with top healthcare institutions to enhance patient experiences, reduce clinician burnout, and boost management efficiency through cutting-edge AI and machine learning technology.

Explore the immense possibilities AI, machine learning, and cloud computing bring to healthcare. Despite the ongoing digital transformation in hospitals, the quest for standardized data across systems remains a pressing challenge. With a focus on automation and interoperability, Spikewell uses AI and robotic process automation to create more synchronized and autonomous healthcare systems. Our conversation illuminates the path forward, showcasing how these technologies can drastically reduce costs and foster clinical innovations, ultimately transforming patient care and healthcare management.

Join us as we highlight Spikewell's innovative solutions aimed at enhancing healthcare operations through technology. Hear the inspiring case study of a top children's hospital that revolutionized its IT support system during the COVID-19 pandemic with SpikeSupportAI, slashing workloads and speeding up response times with email automation and chatbots. As we set our sights on 2025, we share our excitement for the future of healthcare innovation. \

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:04

Hello everyone. This is Irma and Evan. Welcome to the show. Today we dive into the future of healthcare IT with Spikewell, an innovator in making healthcare smarter, faster and more connected. Bk welcome.

Speaker 2 0:19

Thank you, Irma, Thank you Evan for having me, Thanks for being here, Of course it's a pleasure.

Speaker 1 0:24

Let's dive right in. What inspired you to start SpikeWell and what's the main problem you're solving in healthcare IT? Just an easy question to start.

Speaker 2 0:34

Sure, sure, sure, irma. So you know, my core team actually comes from investment banking. So we were technology people, but my core team comes from investment banking in wall street. And one of the thing is, you know, we did a lot of um, my team did a lot of innovation in their career in, uh, in the financial industry and always we thought that you know similar technology if we can bring to health care and what improvement we can do.

Speaker 2 1:06

So one of the things we found, I mean one of the things we always realized that you know, wealth is good but wellness is even better. So that's why, if you look at Spikewell logo, it's actually SW, but the way it is written it's like a dollar sign with a W with an arrow going up. It actually represents the trump of wellness over wealth. Dollar represents wealth and it's a wellness. It's SW the name of the company Spikewell, but it is written that way. So wellness in spares, because wellness comes with wealth, but wellness is much more than wealth. So it is the wellness, well-being, health. That's what we wanted to bring. Technology to improve health.

Speaker 3 1:51

Brilliant. So let's dive into the technology which I'm personally fascinated by, and Irma will dive into the patient and provider benefits as well. But what's the main problem you're solving in healthcare? It, and you know how are you making these systems that support doctors, patients smarter and work better.

Speaker 2 2:16

So, Iban, you know, when we looked at the hospital space, we primarily work on hospital space. We are actually we directly partner with hospitals. Some of the top hospitals in the nation, like top 10 hospitals in the nation, is our clients actually. And what we found in healthcare in the hospital space, just like you mentioned, there are three components to it. One is the patient. Everything hovers around the patient, and then there are providers, which are like doctors and nurses, primarily, and then there is a hospital management. You know, between these three, of course, there is a payment, insurance and all these things come together.

Speaker 2 2:57

But this is where the care is delivered and there are opportunity of innovation in all three areas, starting with the patient.

Speaker 2 3:06

The care is patient centric, improving patient experience, and then how do we make you know what we call the clinicians born out One of the born out region is a technology actually, unfortunately and then how the hospital management, which want always more efficient, and how they can reduce cost and all. So the technology solution we develop actually addresses all these components in a very fascinating way and it's a big opportunity in the area, with the emergence of artificial intelligence and machine learning, and then the digitization which is happening over the time are coming to a point where we can make big impact for hospitals and healthcare institutions. So even to a question is where Spikewell comes in is actually we partner with the hospitals to bring innovation and software solutions to improve the healthcare in general. I can go discuss in every aspect. How do we impact? We create things for patients and also we create things for doctors and nurses and also for the management and bring a lot of automation, cost-saving patient care improvement. So I will currently have over 50 projects going on in these aspects.

Speaker 1 4:38

Actually, Wow, wow. Well, we'll dive into some of these areas later on, but first let's stick with technology itself. You said technology had brought on some additional challenges, including burnout for the physicians, so let's talk about AI tools that you've developed, like the medical scribes and chat spots, and tell us how they're actually solving burnout or helping physicians and patients, as opposed to adding another layer of technology.

Speaker 2 5:11

Sure, sure, I'm so fascinated. Thank you for this question, because this is actually one of the most interesting things you know.

Speaker 2 5:19

If you look at hospital and healthcare organizations, they're not technology companies, their primary aim is to help a patient, and technology sometimes they look at it as a hindrance, so it's something they must have. But we from the technology people, we look into it as a very different thing. We want to make it inverted in such a way it is not really just a help, it adds value to the care actually Tremendous value to the care, actually tremendous value to the care. So one of the problem with the I'm just trying to explain the core problem of it. So when, if you look at doctors and all you know, they have all these massive EHR systems and all where I want to put this, which chart? I need to open what I? So technology is a great, but technology you have to learn. They don't want to learn that, they don't. So it is so far the way technology has been evolving is that, hey, you need to learn that piece of technology so that you can do something better. Technology people all over the world, they may love it, but not a physician, not a nurse. That's not their work. So with artificial intelligence and machine learning, uh, irma, what is happening is we have an opportunity now to turn the things around. We are not going to learn the technology. Technology will learn what I want? Okay, that's the, that's the adaptability coming with AI and machine learning. So, for instance, hospitals are extremely complex workflow environment and if you put a rigid structure of technology and everybody has to learn, even if they learn it, they may do something in a good way, but still this is a rigid framework that won't be suitable for something. Different changes, because the care is such a complex phenomenon, patient to patient different, and all these things. The workflow could change. Now we have the opportunity with the AI and machine learning, deep learning and all these generative AI and things coming. It will adopt the technology, will adopt the way the doctor is working.

Speaker 2 7:23

Let's say I'm just giving an example. So DocWell, the solution SpikeWell has developed. So where a doctor is, let's say, I'm doctor, you are patient, we are having this conversation, this silent background. Docwell works behind the scenes. Doctor need not have to take any note or anything and all these things. It's like a personal assistant. It is taking record of the conversation, making the meaning out, putting the right course, putting it into the system and the doctor has to just finally look into and hit a button. Okay, that what it has done. I'm just giving one example, and there are so many other examples I can give. So that is the kind of thing. You know, this is one of the things. So I just wanted to give an example.

Speaker 3 8:14

That's a great example, and there are so many challenges within healthcare providers in terms of outdated tech. We have a fancy word for it technical debt. But where do you start and how do you begin to fix it? Where do you start with these mountains of legacy technology challenges?

Speaker 2 8:39

So if you look at the innovation which is happening over the period and today, if you ask why AI and machine learning today, actually AI machine learning, machine learning today, actually, ai machine learning is not today. It's pretty old actually. The idea was the models was always there. Two things happened. Okay, major thing One, over the period, you know, the computing speed went up tremendously. And the second one, which I consider the most important innovation in the field of computing happened, is the cloud. So what happened with the cloud and the processing speed went up. Now we got the opportunity to bring all those models which are extremely complex, and we have the opportunity to bring the innovation. So I would consider cloud computing, of course, computer speed, combined with the massive amount of data we are collecting over the period of time and the advanced models available. Now we have the opportunity that, instead of writing a program I mean of course there is a programming and all but the technology can adapt to the workflow and make the life seamless. So where the future is going, more and more the technology will adapt to my behavior. So more personalization.

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Speaker 2 10:04

Even the hospitals you know it's not a standard hospital, even if you go to we work for some of the top hospitals and they are at the forefront of this technology, but you will still find so many things are done in a very primitive way. Actually, you know, and there is no standard between a hospital. If I hospital A, hospital B, they're very similar top tier hospitals, but their workflows are very different. They may be using the same EHR system, but the way it is customized, the way it is designed is very different and it is over the period of time. So you know, that is one of the reason is, you know, when we first entered into healthcare space and you know, we always first wonder why big players are not in this space. The reason is big players because it's not easy to standardize. So that's where you know new innovation and opportunities like us entering in is happening, and yeah, so.

Speaker 1 11:29

Well, that's an interesting observation. I know from personal experience, having worked for Google. Well, that's an interesting observation.

Speaker 1 11:48

I know from personal experience having worked for Google and, as we know, google has solved a lot of difficult challenges, but when they approached healthcare some many years ago, that proved to be too hard, even for Google. Yeah, exactly, he took a step back and decided to pivot, and yeah, so that resonates. Now back to BK. You were saying how you're basically already solving, for the workflow, which is one of probably most important things in healthcare is there's already complicated workflows and the physicians are already so overburdened and all the medical stuff, including nurses, assistants, et cetera, so we don't want to mess with the workflow. So you're addressing that. Now, how do you make sure that all the different systems, like you've just mentioned the EHRs, the labs, the billing software how do they all talk together? Do you address that piece as well?

Speaker 2 12:29

the interoperability so you know, if you look at hospital and healthcare institutions, you know about a couple of decades ago they started digitizing. A lot of digitization happened, so the paper workflow went to more digitization and more digitization. Today what is happening is that now the biggest challenge is how do you standardize the data? So, from different systems or different ways, so there are standards coming up and the standards are coming up. I think where the major shift is going to happen is that those standardizations, access to the data, along with the artificial intelligence and machine learning, robotic process automation and all this field advanced technology, will bring it together so that the workflow can be automated end-to-end. That's actually our fully-grailed goal is we're not there. It's not going to be that easy, but this is the way to go. There is no other. As far as an industry person, I will say there is no other option right now. This is the way to go and more standardization of the data happens and then, with the power of AI and ML, the organizations will be more synchronous, autonomous and it will start to understand the whole workflow and the intelligence at the top will govern the whole process flow.

Speaker 2 14:04

So, for instance, you have insurance, so I just told you about the dockwell. Okay, that captures the thing, but it has also connection with the billing because it uses the medical coding and all these things and it tells you know where. So so it's all connected, interconnected. Actually it is going to be that way. So, um, the way I envision the future is that it's actually exciting future. So in Spikewell we call it, you know, we solve the. We want to transform healthcare through information technology. People will say you know, healthcare means it should be medical device, it should be next molecule of drug, it should be the next insurance, it should be taught. But what is the information technology doing to transform healthcare? Actually, there is a tremendous amount of opportunity for information technology to address the challenge of healthcare which has not been addressed before, and it has the potential not only to improve patient experience, reduce cost in bringing new innovation, including clinical innovations which are already happening, to take this to the next level which is otherwise not possible in the traditional methods. Wonderful.

Speaker 3 15:25

Amazing mission. Do you care to share any anecdotes or success stories where you know your solutions are really making a difference, whether at the provider level or even down to the patient level? You must see a lot helping individuals.

Enhancing Healthcare Operations Through Technology

Speaker 2 15:42

You know. Thank you, thank you. We have so many, you know, as I said, currently we have over 50 projects going on, and so where we come actually, you as as a company, as I told you, we come as a partner with the hospitals. So there is a difference between spike well and you know, standard consulting companies or software companies who comment we come as partner, we don't come as like a consulting company. So what it means is that we take the hospital's problem as our problem and we solve it just like their extended arm. Okay, we understand it's a system you know, with our experience now we understand how hospitals work and we come up with the innovative solution to address that, address the different. So what happens is we, so we solve that, what we call the last mile problem. Ok, so, so so, for instance, you know, you have a large EHR system like Epix and Sornos of the world. You have a large EHR system like Epix and Sornos of the world. But even if they go to hospital, there is a tremendous amount of work needs to be done before it is actually a clinician can use, or a doctor, a patient and all can use. So we bring that customization along with the AI type solution so that it becomes the most efficient for the hospital. So in the hospital space, as I mentioned before, there are three components. One is the doctors and the care providers, those who directly provide, they are the main partners and then the patient and then the management. So we have created several projects and so, for instance, I start with patient. So we have a we dealt a project called red cap. Red cap is actually tracks the patient experience throughout the care journey, you know, and the care. So let's say, somebody is a cancer patient it's a long-term treatment goes and leukemia or whatever, years of treatment with the hospitals and the hospitalization. It's a very complicated process. How do you capture the patient experience throughout the end-to-end process and bring analytics to top of that and insights and the management sees that the patient journey, actually actually entire patient journey, and the experience. We have technology we have implemented very successfully and because hospitals also compete, you know each other for having all these things and this plays a very important let me this is like a patient experience. We have also a technology called a blue dot technology of spike. Well, where you know from appointment scheduling to all the way where the patient is go. It actually is a digital solution, so he knows which day he has appointment, where the appointment. It will say from the home you know you have the hospital. It will take this many time to reach the hospital. When you arrive in the hospital, where you will park yeah, actually, we have actually even technology they park it and they can position it the software will tell this is where and it will bring you back to the you know parking lot where you park the car and all kinds of things. So and then it will guide you inside the hospital where you want to go, turn by turn. It's like a google map inside the building and hospital buildings are notoriously complex and you take this elevator, go there and then you arrive at the oncology department and it will also show a picture of the oncology department. Okay, this is so you know where to go and you know all these things. That's like one of the example I'm giving the patient side, the doctor side. I was mentioning you like a dark well type of Not only Irma.

Speaker 2 19:37

When you have a solution like this, the management also knows where the patients are moving, where the heat map, where more concentration happening, where they need to put more people. We have also asset management systems where they know where. You know hospital equipments are more put where it is not. So it's the kind of things put where it is not, so it's the kind of things. Also, we have a lot of other solutions.

Speaker 2 20:04

Okay, with artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotic process solutions. So referral management. Big hospitals have a lot of referrals coming in from the primary care. These are all automated by our technology, you know, using what we call these robotic processes. So the robot will go and watch the. You know they're typically PDF files they upload into the system and it will read it and it will identify which department it should go and it will automatically fill up. We have solutions, like you know. Let's say, a nurse has to put a lot of data back into the EHR system. All they need to do is a scan or PDF and put it into a folder and our robot will go and find all these things one by one and extract all the data and put it. You know. Finally, she just have to look at once if there is everything and hit the button and it will go. Ok. I'm just giving some of those examples, and there are so many I can keep on talking on that.

Speaker 1 21:07

Yeah Well, VK, great examples. And actually you've just described to us how you develop a bespoke solution and solve this last mile problem, or even seems maybe last couple of yards problem, when you take the patient back to their car so they don't have to wonder where they might have parked right.

Speaker 1 21:28

So, that brings it. You know kind of in reality for what this whole end-to-end integration looks like. So obviously, as you develop these solutions in partnership with hospitals, you collect a lot of data. So my question is how does Spikewell use data and analytics to help healthcare organizations to improve their day-to-day operations? You already mentioned some, like you know, increasing resources, maybe where you need them. So to improve day-to-day operations and make better decisions overall as an organization, how does it help Irma.

Speaker 2 22:03

Let me give you another very important example. So, one of the top children's hospitals of this country, actually one of the top five. So during COVID what happened is that they asked all the non-clinical staff to go work from home, only clinical staffs to be there. So in a large hospital with 10,000 employees, almost 5,000 people went home work from home. Okay, so when that kind of thing happens, you can imagine the level of IT support burden goes up. Now I cannot connect from the home. I have this problem. I need a computer, I need a phone, nothing is working.

Speaker 2 22:52

So typically a large hospital like that with 10,000 employees, they will have typically, you know, five, six IT support guys who will take a call, fix something. And when systems are within the intranet of the hospital, this is a different thing and you know how critical the hospital IT systems are because of the data and all these things. And as soon as they went home, those people went crazy. And then during COVID time, you know a lot of things are happening with patients. They get overwhelmed. So, uh, one of the children's hospital stops cio, um, he, uh, he's my friend actually he called and said we can do things, spikewell can do something about it and we looked at we looked at the it support, um it support how that works, and we found they have like 10 years of really good data and we came up with a solution. Today we call it SpikeSupportai. Okay, spikesupportai is a solution.

Speaker 2 23:50

What we came up with is that we created two solutions. One is when people write emails that, okay, I need a computer, I need this, I need that, or my password is not resetting, and all these things. So what typically goes it is somebody reads it and somebody contacts the user and they solve it right. So Spike will give you two solutions. One is email automation, another is a chatbot. So what that email automation does is that it reads the email, it understands the context, it assigns to the right vertical, it creates a ticket, sends the ticket to the user I mean so the person who sent this and also tells that who is going to contact and all these things. And not only that if the person is really angry and he wrote that email with a little bit frustration, it raises the priority to five, you know, so that his case is addressed, because it understands the sentiment of the email.

Speaker 2 25:04

Ok, that is it. So, and all it's done within the fraction of a minute, whereas these emails are sitting on the somebody's inbox for days before it is getting answered. Ok, now at least he knows that he's contacting you and the chatbot also. The solution gave a lot of uh, uh, you know immediate answer how do I reset my password and all kinds of things. So what happened? The bottom line is, when we implemented initially, the system was like 85 or 84 accurate. That still was. That still was a big thing. Okay, and I'm just telling, within three months it has also deep learning and all the technology behind it.

Speaker 2 25:48

Every time you get to the system it gets accurate Within like three, four months. It's running over 99% accurate right now. But the team, actually what happened that time? They had a lot of part-time staff and all these things they brought. The team was like 30 people. Now it is reduced to one person's one-fourth of a day's time.

Speaker 1 26:10

What Wow.

Speaker 3 26:13

That's amazing. Well, it's incredible work you're doing and we'd love to spend a few hours diving in, but sadly we don't have the time. So tell us what you're most excited about as we head into 2025. What's on your radar and what technologies are you most keen on leveraging in your mission?

Speaker 2 26:36

You know, we will be continuing to leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning and robotic process automation. With our extensive knowledge with all the leading EHR systems like Sornor, epic, medtech, allscript, paragon and all kinds of EHR systems, we work with various hospitals or hospitals. We want to build the solutions to streamline, enhance patient experience, reduce cost, bring more efficiency to hospitals and bring a lot of innovations, and that's what our goal is to transform healthcare through information technology.

Speaker 1 27:18

Wonderful. That sounds like a great mission information technology. Wonderful, that sounds like a great mission. Bk, thank you so much for your time and, as we wrap up here, maybe tell us where people can learn more about you and what the company is doing. Are you going to be attending any events, any large industry events where people can meet you and get to know more?

Speaker 2 27:40

I went recently to Orlando AI Med that's actually AI in medicine and I probably will go to this HIMSS. Himss is a big conference.

Speaker 1 27:55

Oh yeah, HIMSS, Okay yeah.

Innovative Healthcare Solutions With SpikeWell

Speaker 2 27:56

Next year. I'm going there and people can go to our LinkedIn page and also our Web page, spikewellcom, and also our LinkedIn page, which also describes what Spikewell does and how it brings innovation to hospitals. And you know, the reason I'm super excited is we have actually some of the top hospitals in our as our clients and we are excited about, but there are thousands of hospitals in the United States and we have so much to do. So that's the most exciting thing and we want to be out more people to know about what we do and how we have brought a lot of innovation to some of the top hospitals Wonderful.

Speaker 3 28:41

Well, people are listening. Yeah, Thanks so much for joining.

Speaker 2 28:46

Thank you, ivan, thank you, irma, for having me, and it was a great pleasure talking to you. Thank you, thank you so much, thank you everyone for listening and watching and sharing.

Speaker 1 28:57

And go check out SpikeWell and see what they're up to. Okay, Take care.