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Interview In Action: Preserving the Patient Connection with Blake Anderson

Switchboard, MD helps clinicians focus on patients instead of administrative tasks, giving providers more time to deliver quality care. Learn more at this week health dot com slash switchboard dash M. D. Welcome to This Week Health. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of This Week Health, where we are dedicated to transforming healthcare, one connection at a time.

Now, onto our interview

With a background in both medicine and health IT, Dr. Anderson brings a unique perspective on how AI can enhance efficiency while maintaining high quality patient care. Dr. Anderson, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

I would love for you to share a bit about your history and journey in medicine and what led you to creating this organization.

Sure. So go probably pretty way back and all the way into the undergrad territory where I did the pre med work, but also did computer science. Always had a lot of interest in programming and solving random solutions that way.

And fast forward a little bit had a very busy practice at Emory and I found that it was getting harder and harder to see a full panel of patients and then also respond to a bunch of messages at the same time. And there wasn't really any great native solutions to solve that problem and so I ended up training a NLP classification algorithm to solve the problem get the message to the right person immediately.

When you think holistically about the problem that Switchboard, MD is solving and how it fits into the broader healthcare IT ecosystem, what's important for people to know?

It lowers the barrier to entry for patients to get in and, communicate with their physicians and other members of the care team lot faster. I think that the part that people don't necessarily realize is how much back end back and forth that exists. When these messages and other forms of communication get initiated.

And so I think that, what we have been able to do is, knowing what the workflows are and, being able to shortcut a lot of those inefficient steps can really drive a lot of value for both the patients and the providers because the patients get. Faster response to messages because they're not having to wait for messages to get bounced around to five different people and the providers and other, nurses and medical assistants, they can focus on, more specific tasks.

Sometimes, the integrations specifically with patient messages the integration is possible, right? It's just a matter of getting to work with the right person in the healthcare organization that has the access needed to, we call it connect the plumbing. I think that's the biggest issue.

And, this has been done by a lot of different people, and I think that some of these complex integrations that is, and I think that crossing into that zone of saying this is okay to do this integration, I think is one of the bigger hurdles.

What aspects, though, of AI adoption do you believe are overlooked in discussions amongst health care leaders?

And I think that, the attraction to the shiny objects can sometimes distract from what's gonna really drive the most impact on the day-to-day workflow of people. And I think that, part of the issue is. I think that there's been a reliance on, older technologies like Excel spreadsheets to maintain, workflow decisions and things like that.

And a lot of times people are reluctant to let go of those. And I think also some people necessarily don't understand how much. is dependent upon having, a spreadsheet or a PDF or a PowerPoint that was created however many years ago for people to, go through and be like, if this, then this.

One of the wins is that as a physician, you built the product, but your article also highlights the importance of usability and physician trust in AI. How can a healthcare system or an executive who's not necessarily the physician ensure that AI tools are built with end users needs in mind?

And I think you have to be able to keep logs of. What's happening to every, data transactions occurs and, being able to go back and retroactively assess the accuracy having those safeguards in place, I think is very important.

With so many healthcare systems struggling with data quality, interoperability, even the governance factors around usage of AI, how can you use it to overcome the challenges that they're trying to solve?

I.

So A. I. Is now making in some cases, clinical recommendations. And there's a ton of discussion around both bias and fairness. How do organizations ensure that their models are equitable and safe for all patient populations?

So it's a little bit challenging. It's easier when it's structured data to assess and make sure there's no biases.

You can go back and retroactively look and make sure there's no, drift for certain populations based on, age, race, gender and things like that. It's a little bit more challenging. When it's unstructured data, which Is what we're, primarily utilizing is unstructured data.

You've created a product that solves for now and for the future. How do you believe that it will influence? The clinician patient relationship, let's just say the crystal ball effect of maybe in the next two to four years as well.

Yeah. So I think that, what I was alluding to earlier, as far as the ultimate goal is to make that communication easier.

They don't need to manage. I, as the doctor, I literally can't schedule appointments. I probably could, but I. You'd have to figure out how to do that. And so like I shouldn't have that in my inbox. And I think that, once we can declutter all the kind of unnecessary administrative tasks then it's better for the patient.

Because, when they do truly have that clinical question that only a physician can answer, the physician now has more time deal with that.

So much of the conversation around the tools, especially around inbox management, workflow, office visit, PCP specialists, et cetera, has been around, take seven or eight people on the back end to really take care of one patient.

But one of the areas we're focusing on is meeting patients where they are, not everyone has signed up for the online portals. Some people, prefer just to still to call in and talk to an agent or leave a voicemail or something like that. And that's one of the more exciting areas that we are as a company expanding into is some of the other mediums.

And I think that, as the populations age and. Technological adoption being variable in different age groups. think being able to, handle different communication mediums I think is important.

there are times when you want the convenience factor of the portal or a text. There are times though, especially if you have a pretty chronic condition or something has happened that you weren't expecting, you still need to talk to a person and you want the doctor's office to answer, not the call center.

That's what it's all about. And that personalization effect, like I grew up with my doctor 10 houses down and people want that. They still want that connection to the person that they're trusting with their wellbeing.

Yeah. I think we're not, quite to the point where people are ready to just give up all control and just go with any kind of anonymous.

doctor or chatbot or anything like that. And it's amazing. Primary care is obviously very unique with those relationships. And I used to always laugh that, people would go see subspecialists people who are experts in their field,

[Mic bleed]

have done more of a procedure than like anyone else in the world.

And then they still would come back to me, the primary care doctor what do you think I should do? Honestly, I think you need to listen to that person, but I think it highlights the importance of that personal connection and finding ways to make that better. I think

Which is such an important factor when you think about how you're having the conversation to utilize these technologies. If you could advise healthcare leaders on one AI strategy to prioritize today, what would it be?

I think what I was saying earlier, and I think that, making sure that it is a problem first solution, second situation, I think that's one of the advantages of some of the AI that's coming out is it's easier to have very focused solutions, and it's not like a solution in search of a problem.

But I think, making sure that whoever is making the decisions, they're focusing on how is it actually integrating into somebody's workflow and it's not going to, make something even more burdensome than before.

So I think that one of the key things is.

There's always gonna be some amount of change management whenever you adopt a new technology. I think that finding ways to minimize that make the adoption process as easy as possible. And that's one of the things that we have always focused on is trying to minimize that as much as possible and make it as seamless into the workflow as possible, but broader thing there is.

Change management is very hard, and I've seen that firsthand and, operational roles, and it can be very challenging, and it can be difficult to convince people to let go of their Excel spreadsheets.

Unless your OCM expert is using a spreadsheet to track all the outcomes and different stakeholder engagements.

And that's when things get expensive and get messy. And when you really plan it ahead of time, it's amazing how well it can go.

Pound of prevention is worth a pound of cure

This was such a great conversation.

Thank you, Dr. Blake Anderson, for taking time with us to share Switchboard, MD, your background, the future of what you are going to continue to do with your product for your own health system and beyond. And we are grateful for your partnership and look forward to your continued growth.

Thank you very much.

For everyone tuning into our executive interview, thanks for listening. That's all for now.

Thanks

for listening to this Interview in Action episode. If you found value in this, share it with a peer. It's a great chance to discuss and in some cases start a mentoring relationship. One way you can support the show is to subscribe and leave us a rating. If you could do that would be great, thanks for listening. That's all for now.