Dr. Givona Sandiford takes on documentation with AI

Dr. Givona Sandiford, an award-winning speech-language pathologist (SLP) and founder of Melospeech, shares her inspiring journey from clinician to tech innovator. She discusses the challenges she faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, including her personal battle with postpartum depression, which fueled her passion for creating technology solutions that streamline the workflow for SLPs. Dr. Sandiford highlights the development of Melospeech's AI tools, particularly the SLPeace Bot, designed to simplify documentation and enhance clinical efficiency. Her story emphasizes the importance of innovation in healthcare and the recognition her company has received for its contributions to the field.

Transcript

Leila 0:00

Today, we're talking with Dr. Givona Sandiford, an award-winning speech language pathologist and health tech entrepreneur. Dr. Sandiford is the founder of Melo speech Incorporated, a tech-enabled therapy practice that began during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sandiford has been recognized by publications like Fast Company and Cosmopolitan, and in 2024 won a gold Stevie from the American Business Awards for Tech Innovator of the Year in Services. On this episode, we talk about her journey as a developer of the SLPeace bot, a HIPAA-compliant AI tool which helps SLPs streamline their documentation and workflow. We get into how she turned her own experience with burnout into a passion for innovation. This is SLPs Talk Tech. You're one of the first people, actually, that I ever reached out to on LinkedIn to inquire about what you were doing in the innovation SLP technology space. And it's been so nice to have uh recurring conversations with you over the last six months. So thank you so much for making the time to be here and chat with me today.

Dr. Givona Sandiford 1:11

Thanks, Leila. I'm excited to be here with you.

Leila 1:14

You are an incredible innovator and speech language pathologist, and you're doing some very important things in our field when it comes to using technology to bridge some of the clinical gaps. I wanted to talk about your role as the founder of Melospeech and to hear about how you overcame the challenges that you were having there as a private practice owner and how that led you to become a technology developer.

Dr. Givona Sandiford 1:40

Yeah, so um my company is Melospeech Inc. I love my team. I have such a wonderful team to support me. Even just now, they're already working in the field. Many of them are in the field seeing clients. I've got my admin team handling all those tasks, my scheduling team, my supervisors. I could not do anything with Melospeech without my team. So I'm really excited about that. It did start with just me during the COVID-19 pandemic. Um, I just had my son and I was recovering from severe postpartum depression. Um, and I would not really, I would never wish that on an enemy. It was so horrible. I've never had any experience with depression like that. Um, and to have it just come on all of a sudden and not know what's going on in your mind and in your mind is crazy. Like it will convince you of things that are not true. So I have uh real compassion for people who have mental health struggles because I recovered from that. I was two years on disability. First job out, I was working as a manager at another company, 60-70 hours a week for not much money, and it was hard. So I was like, I'm out of here. I started my own company. I was just gonna work a day or two and spend the day at home with my son. It was COVID-19 pandemic. I ended up getting so many referrals that I just started hiring people and I had an HR certification. So I was able to kind of put that to use and just grew the company from there. And um a lot of the tech tools that we created were because I couldn't be in the office and seeing clients and I didn't have a lot of help at that time. So we just our first one, we said, hey, this task is taking us two, three hours, and I don't have that time. I need to be with my clients. And so that was before um Open AI was so easily accessible. They, I mean, I think they were the first big one, and now we have so many AI providers, but we had to write our own algorithms. So we wrote an algorithm to automate a process that took it from multiple hours to two minutes, and that was our first innovation. Boom. And so since then, we have had tons and tons of innovations that have help helped us kind of save money and save time. Um, and so that's kind of been our journey. And along the way, we happened to get some recognition for those different things. So yeah, I I love my team. It's a great team, and we're doing as much as we can to change the world one little one at a time.

Leila 3:58

So I love it. I love the story from um company founder to actually becoming like a tech founder because in the provider service world, you know, we're always trying to kind of think about technology solutions that can help us meet our clients' needs or even our own workflow needs. But that doesn't very often lead to us actually creating these technology solutions. You know, it's a whole different, um, a whole different beast. Um, but speaking of recognition, I actually just wanted to acknowledge your recent award by FAST Company for being one of the top 50 workplaces for innovators. It's amazing. Congratulations

Dr. Givona Sandiford 4:32

Yeah, I mean, it was exciting. Thank you. It was exciting to get that award, best workplaces for innovators. Um, I just actually couldn't go there to pick it up. So Christine Yu, one of our leadership team uh in New York, she picked up the award for us at the Innovation Festival, Fast Company Innovation Festival. But um she was there with people that were from companies like Lenovo, Moderna, Roblox, I mean Yelp. Canva was listed as one of the Canva. Um it, I just, you know, to be listed among those is huge, especially because we only innovated to survive, right? So, in order for our profession to move forward and to keep paying our people and to finish the tasks that we needed to finish and the time that we needed to finish them, we had to innovate, and that's what we did. So those tools ended up being um something that caught the recognition of companies like you know, Cosmopolitan, Fast Company, um, EdTech Digest, and place uh people like that. So it's like pretty exciting. It is.

Leila 5:31

Um, I want to talk about one of my favorite products that you have, which is the SLP eace bot. Um, can you, you know, this is a tool that you use in your clinic. It's a tool that I've used in my professional workflow. Can you tell us a little bit about the reason for developing the SLPeace bot?

Dr. Givona Sandiford 5:48

Yes. So the SLPeace bot, as it says in the name, is all about peace for SLPs. When I started as an SLP, I spent so much time on documentation. I remember spending all nighters, just like all night doing my documentation, um, just being really behind on what we called EV12s. They were just progress, quick progress reports for every kid. And I had so many kids on my caseload that I couldn't even get them done in one full night of just staying up all night. And that's when I realized, oh my God, I think I chose the wrong field. This is a nightmare. This this is not for me. This is not what I thought it would be. But now with technology, none of that is necessary. You know, we we do not need to spend all night on documentation. So the SLPeace bot came out of Melospeech's need to figure out a way to get our documentation done. We had multiple people that would put out notes that would say things like making progress. That's not enough for us to know what's going on and also we wouldn't pass audits with that. And then also we had people that weren't doing their documentation at all. Okay, and that's also an issue because if we don't write it down, then it didn't happen, right? That's something we know in our field. So I spoke with my team. How can we get rid of this problem that's really just, you know, implement or just impacting us so much? Um, and what we did is we decided that the session summary that our team is required to do at the end of each visit for the family, we could turn that dictated summary into a note with this tool. So the first version was called the Melo Peeps AI Notebot. And then we ended up being on Season 18 of The Blox. We were voted most investable company out of hundreds of companies on the show. It was a very scary experience being on reality TV. I never want to do it again. But anyway, we won most investable company, but it was a judge on that show that listened to our tech and said, Hey, this tech that you have, this notebot, I think you should release it to the entire world. And I told her, well, I think it's like a very simple innovation that tons of companies are going to come up with almost immediately the minute we come up with it, or even if they're not doing it already. And she said, Well, be that as it may, is something that would make life easier for every clinician. And so um, we released our first version to 5,000 SLPs. I don't know if you were in that group. Uh we allowed 5,000 SLPs. Yes, 5,000 SLPs into that very basic, glitchy, you know, like we just got it out there version. And then um we didn't get 5,000 total, but that's the cutoff that we allowed. And then from there we got feedback from them and we just kept fine-tuning and fine-tuning and fine-tuning. And we've had multiple iterations now. Most recently, now people can write a quick note or type up a quick note, just upload it. And um, it could be very shorthand and it'll do a full, beautiful report. So um, yeah, that's the tool. It totally cut out hundreds and hundreds of hours of documentation time for my team and saved us legitimately six figures pretty quickly.

Leila 8:45

So yeah, I love it as a tool. I mean, it does all the things that you want like technology to do for you. It de-identifies, it keeps um, it keeps the information succinct, it can kind of organize your thoughts if you uh dictate them out of order. I mean, it's just very thoughtful and well done. And it it just is so clear that you thoughtfully implemented this. You tested it with your own clinicians, and then when you shared it with the rest of us, you were sharing something with us that was actually usable, um, which is awesome in the emerging tech world. So um, the way you put SLP's bot together, I think was just so thoughtful. And I'm so excited to recommend it to people now when I talk to them about what products are you using to actually help you quickly don't dictate your notes. And this is like the number one tool.

Dr. Givona Sandiford 9:31

Cool. Thanks so much. Yeah, it's really been game changing for us. And I think it's there's something like such a good feeling about putting something out there in the world that you feel proud of. I don't know if you're an artist or a poet or writing. It's like when you put something out there that you feel proud of and that people actually benefit from, that's a really great feeling to help other people. I think it's very different than putting something out there for the sake of just saying making money or doing something, something like that. You know, like if we were trying to make money off of it, we would have charged a way more than what we're charging. But we make our money primarily from our service end of the business. And this is just something we put out um in addition to that. And so it's been really exciting to hear feedback like that. You know, it took a lot of work. So um thank you. Yeah.

Leila 10:17

So many of us as clinicians, we're so mission aligned. And so when we find mission-aligned products, I feel like we're like, oh, we definitely want to get in line for this one, you know, which kind of makes me think too. When you go into these other innovator spaces, are you finding a lot of other clinicians there? Um, you know, with similar challenges, like you identified for yourself initially, or is it a different crowd?

Dr. Givona Sandiford 10:40

Uh, it's a different crowd. It's so funny because I just saw this um article from an innovator in the UK. She was a female new mom. She had a newborn, and she went to a convention for developers and she brought her newborn with her, and they wouldn't let her in because they said that no children were allowed. The newborn was in arms in a carrier, and she could not get in. And because the space was all men, you know, so it wasn't something that was common to have a new nursing mom uh attend an event like that and made the news. And I thought how many times I've tried to attend tech events and I wanted to bring my son and they've said no children. So um, yeah, it's just, you know, in the therapy space, there's a lot of females. It's very different than speech because speech is like over 90% female. So yeah, at most events, they're gonna allow kids or, you know, like it's not gonna be weird to see somebody tone toting their two-year-old along. But right now, they're we had to find child care um for the fast company event, and then we just ended up not being able to make it at all.

Leila 11:39

So oh my goodness. Right. We're often trying to so hard to get out of our own silos, but we can't get out of our own silo if we can't actually be ourselves and be fully present in those spaces.

Dr. Givona Sandiford 11:52

Yeah, I hopefully things will change and we'll see people like us. But yeah, most of these events are um men. And even just trying to get the platform SLPeace bot out there, I just it was really tough trying to get uh the different components that we needed because I had to fight very hard. I had to go all the way to the top. I'm not gonna name the brand because I don't want to throw them under the bus. But like I straight reached out to their CEO and then it had to go from the top down where he said, Hey, um, what's going on with this person? And they let me in. But it was just like, why am I having to work so hard to get into a space that other people are just easily getting into? And I think there's just barriers for us to start. But once we get through there, they'll see we have that expertise, like that speech therapy expertise, particularly with assistive technology. When companies, and you saw this post on LinkedIn, I was so mad, but when companies go and then they upgrade their tool and they're like, oh, it's upgraded, there's no need to move every single button to a different spot. That just makes it slower for everybody who's already had the muscle memory to memorize the old version. If the play button doesn't need to move to the top right when it's been on the bottom left, why move it? Unless it's to make it faster. We know that from AAC. We're not going to go move all the little icons around. That's gonna really frustrate the kid. So it's just like we have that knowledge and it a lot of that is transferable. Yeah.

Leila 13:11

It's so interesting too because, like as a female innovator and technology developer and a clinician, you know, you're pulled in a lot of different spaces. I'm kind of wondering um, what kind of professional events are you finding yourself at to interface with new folks who might be using your product or people who might be interested in your product?

Dr. Givona Sandiford 13:32

So I made my first app in 2012. So um uh I think the first event that I went to was at Stanford. It was a health tech innovation conference, and it was actually I was invited by an SLP who had transitioned to technology, technology. She left the field, and I feel like her name escapes me now. At the time, she was huge for I don't know if you know who it is, but she was one of the first ones to leave the field for technology. And she became a developer uh UI expert, and she invited me to speak uh at that conference in Stanford. And it was amazing because I was part of a group of developers and a, you know, like a case study. They had a competition where you had to be a group of developers and come up with something innovative. And I got made the CEO, which was just a draw. We just drew from a cup and it ended up being me. And it was just so much fun. But yeah, none of them look like me. And so yeah, they've they were um all different. And we came up with technology that we now already have. That was maybe 12 years ago, or maybe seven, I don't know what year that was. But yeah, we came up with a smart mirror that would remind you of different things when you look at it in the morning, including your med and your schedule, just pop up. Um, but so that's when I went to, and then I'd just gone to um a couple of Asha conventions, but mostly those have been virtual. I prefer to attend virtually now just because I can also do my work and then also get the information in at the same time.

Leila 14:52

Um it's just so interesting because like I went to my first AI hackathon recently, right? And I was I was the only clinician there. There were it was an AI hackathon that was um hosted at MIT by uh, you know, a postdoc and a faculty member in the Boston area. And um, we were specifically focusing on um AI solutions in education. But I was the only clinician. There were a few educators, but it was so interesting to kind of interface with these other people that are interested in um innovation in our field who understand the challenges we have in education. Um, and so I've kind of found that uh going into these new places is a great way for me to get a different perspective on not just the innovation that I think we need as a provider to school age children, um, but also what are the other perspectives people who want to innovate in the education space have and to hear what they have to say, because otherwise I don't, you know, we're not going to the same perhaps technology conferences, right? So I just think kind of where people end up going to seek continuing education and to develop maybe new partnerships is something that's interesting.

Dr. Givona Sandiford 15:59

I did do the Scrum, Scrum Master training. That was something that was really interesting and um to see a lot of different people from all over the world getting this CSM um certified Scrum Master. Um, but yeah, it was really interesting being in breakout rooms with those those groups. And um, I mean, I hate speaking on this, but there's truth to it, just being one of the only women in the group on that I was in, you know, the I was I'm a person that takes charge and we're for all standing there, you know, sitting there staring at each other. I'm gonna say something because I don't want to just waste my time. So I just like said, hey, how about we start with introducing ourselves and just getting into that? And and one of the very rude men from like me on the, I don't know where he was from. He had a heavy accent. He said, No, we don't need to waste time introducing ourselves. What's the answer to these questions? And then no one spoke. Why didn't they speak? Because no rapport was established. And as we know as clinicians, if you do not have rapport, you have nothing.

Leila 17:01

I love it. I love it. Um, so we talked about the SLPeace bot, which is a fantastic product, but I know you are innovating and coming up with some uh new products and solutions. Can you talk to us a little bit about um what you're thinking of next or another product that you've um really enjoyed kind of um sharing the latest iteration of?

Dr. Givona Sandiford 17:23

Yeah, I mean, we have so many that we use internally that are proprietary and they're not yet out. But um we also have our CMS PB5, which is for birth to five professionals, that basically um you put in the information on the child and it helps you write up a full comprehensive report uh with recommendations. Those are straight from Asha and the CDC, but you do need to read it over before you send it out, right? You can't just and then just send it out because you know, like it might have mistakes in it. So you have to use your clinical judgment. And most recently, we've loved some of the Google Workspace tools that we have under our um advanced account. So one of the ones that we use quite frequently is to upload our parent education packet and different trainings into their system and their AI tool that they have. Of course, this is like not PHI, this is just a training packet. Their AI tool can create podcasts on it, it can create videos on it. Um, we use it with our staff. So, like some people are not so great with the reading comprehension. Basically, our staff can now put in questions and it will pull the answer from our from our parent education uh packet and give them the response. So, like, well, that sounds like a tough situation. In this situation, perhaps you might want to start with establishing rapport, maybe rebuilding rapport with the family and the child, maybe following the child's lead instead of trying to force the interaction. Uh, just let them choose the activity or even give choices. Do you want to do this or this? And that way you have so anyway, it pulls directly from our source and will answer questions for them. And so that's something we really love. We've created multiple parent training videos from our educational sources that we can send as homework as well. And it does that in like two sec, two, three seconds. It's not very long. So there's just so many ways you can use AI and uh to with our field combined with our field.

Leila 19:10

So yeah. I think finding those kind of ethical AI applications is such a sweet spot right now because there's so many people who have not yet really started digging into what AI can do. And then there are some folks who are kind of like the super experimenters, right? Like I would put myself in that category, like if something new comes out, I just want to play with it. I just want to get my hands on it, I want to see what it feels like, what it does well. Um, and then look at that over time. So um, speaking of AI, actually, I wanted to kind of end our conversation today with a question about technology. Um, and that is if AI could do one task for you, would it be a personal ask or a professional ask?

Dr. Givona Sandiford 19:53

That's so funny because I feel like I was prepared for this because you prep you prep me, but my answer is the same. I would want AI to do my laundry for me. How about my son's clothes when he throws those things on the floor at the end of the day? That AI just sucks that straight into the laundry and then it's clean. Because I feel like we already have the tech to do this. Um, I don't mind just feeding it in there. And then you just go through the whole cycle and it comes out nice and folded and clean for him. Uh, that would save me a lot of time and take away a task that I absolutely do not love. So if anybody's out there listening, I see that you have that lawn mower that will go and mow that whole lawn with AI. Come back to the women. We spend a lot of money on this kind of stuff. Take away the laundry task. Okay.

Leila 20:40

I love it. I love it. One of my favorite memes that I that I've seen so far about AI is like a woman who read, oh, AI can now write poetry so I can do the laundry. And she's like, wait, I want to write poetry. Can AI do my laundry? Like, what is this? Yes, it's coming. It's just a little slower. Well, Dr. Givona Sandiford, you're an amazing innovator, founder, and clinician. I'm so honestly in awe of what you have been doing since 2012 as a speech pathologist and the way you have used technology to enhance not just your own clinical practice, but the clinical practice of other SLPs. And um I'm really looking forward to following what happens with Melospeech in the years to come. I thank you so much for giving me your time today and sharing more about your journey and technology and your experiences.

Dr. Givona Sandiford 21:31

Yeah, and thanks for having this podcast, you know, to help SLPs who are especially afraid of technology. Some people are deathly afraid of that. If I can, I know we have a time limit. If I can just share one quick tale from my history, when I started as an SLP 20 years ago, um, they were finally just getting our IEPs to be on, you know, actually like a computer-based system. And there were SLPs who quit the field, they left, they retired early because they were so afraid to go from handwritten IEPs to typing up something. And that was that was old school tech, right? So I know today there are SLPs who are very afraid to try AI, that are very afraid to innovate. Um, and and I would say to them, don't get left behind. Give it a try. And if you don't like it, well, you don't have to do it, but at least give it a try. You might find that you're saving yourself from burnout, which is very common in our field.

Leila 22:30

SLPs Talk Tech is produced by Leila Denna Staiger and Home-Views Incorporated. This podcast is a part of SLPs Talk Tech, a community designed to connect clinicians, researchers, and innovators as they explore speech language pathology in the AI era. You can learn more or listen at SLPstalktech.com or wherever you get your podcasts.