Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Today, we
Speaker 1: are witnessed to one of those rare moments in history,
Speaker 1: the rise of an innovative technology with the potential to
Speaker 1: radically transform business and society forever. That technology, of course,
Speaker 1: is artificial intelligence, and it's the central focus for this
Speaker 1: new season of Smart Talks with IBM. Join hosts from
Speaker 1: your favorite Pushkin podcasts as they talk with industry experts
Speaker 1: and leaders to explore how businesses can integrate AI into
Speaker 1: their workflows and help drive real change in this new
Speaker 1: era of AI, and of course, host Malcolm Gladwell will
Speaker 1: be there to guide you through the season and throw
Speaker 1: in his two cents as well. Look out for new
Speaker 1: episodes of Smart Talks with IBM every other week on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker 1: and learn more at IBM dot com slash smart Talks.
Speaker 2: Hello, Hello, Welcome to Smart Talks with IBM, a podcast
Speaker 2: from Pushkin Industries, iHeartRadio and IBM. I'm Malcolm Glawell. This season,
Speaker 2: we're continuing our conversations with new creators visionaries who are
Speaker 2: creatively applying technology in business to drive change, but with
Speaker 2: a focus on the transformative power of artificial intelligence and
Speaker 2: what it means to leverage AI as a game changing
Speaker 2: multiplier for your business. Today's episode is a case study
Speaker 2: of sorts as AI expands its reach to different industries,
Speaker 2: the healthcare profession is on the forefront of adoption. The
Speaker 2: integration of AI into the healthcare industry is fostering a
Speaker 2: more inclusive and efficient healthcare system. Pushkin's very own doctor
Speaker 2: Lori Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast, sat down
Speaker 2: for a conversation with Alice Creshy. Alice is the co
Speaker 2: founder and the CEO of fertility care provider ovum Health.
Speaker 2: Founded in twenty twenty three. Ovum Health consists of a
Speaker 2: multi specialty group of board certified experts, physicians, nutritionness and
Speaker 2: patient advocates who are passionate about helping moms to be
Speaker 2: with pre pregnancy, pregnancy and postpartum healthcare. As an online platform,
Speaker 2: they are able to diagnose, treat, and manage conditions from
Speaker 2: the comfort of patients homes. Alice became an advocate for
Speaker 2: accessible family planning when she was diagnosed with breast cancer
Speaker 2: at age thirty one. As a healthcare activist, author, cancer
Speaker 2: and infertility survivor. She has dedicated her life to improving
Speaker 2: access to exceptional health care, regardless of income, insurance, religion, race, identity,
Speaker 2: or location. Alice and Laurie discuss the barriers to healthcare access,
Speaker 2: the ways in which AI can be leveraged to expand
Speaker 2: the reach of healthcare providers, and how ovum healths partnership
Speaker 2: with IBM and the use of the IBM Watson x
Speaker 2: Assistant platform has been enhancing the patient experience. Just a
Speaker 2: heads up before we dive in. This conversation touches on
Speaker 2: sensitive topics such as paternal health and fertility. Please take
Speaker 2: care when listening. Okay, let's get to the conversation.
Speaker 3: Alice, thank you so much for joining me. To start off,
Speaker 3: tell me a little bit about your current role.
Speaker 4: Hi, Laurie, thank you so much for having me today.
Speaker 4: I'm thrilled to be here. My current role is as
Speaker 4: co founder and CEO of ovum Health. We are a
Speaker 4: network of fertility telehealth clinics in the United States, and
Speaker 4: really my job is to make sure that all the
Speaker 4: people that we want to serve know that we exist
Speaker 4: and to make sure that I create a sustainable company
Speaker 4: so that all the good work that my clinicians are
Speaker 4: doing really reach the millions, truly millions of people who
Speaker 4: need us.
Speaker 3: So your fertility journey began at thirty one when you
Speaker 3: were diagnosed with cancer. That must have been awful. Tell
Speaker 3: me about the days and weeks surrounding that news and
Speaker 3: what was your life like.
Speaker 4: Yes, the way that I've always described it is that
Speaker 4: the news almost hit the pause button on my life.
Speaker 4: And the extraordinary thing was that it became my full
Speaker 4: time job just managing all the diagnostic steps involved. So truly,
Speaker 4: for the first thirty days, I was in a vortex
Speaker 4: of all things cancer related, and I was one of
Speaker 4: the lucky ones. And that a friend asked me, are
Speaker 4: you going to freeze your eggs? I would never have
Speaker 4: even thought to ask about it had she not brought
Speaker 4: it up. I went into the fertility clinic, and really
Speaker 4: what was extraordinary is that the day before my appointment
Speaker 4: at the physical clinic, I had a telephone console. This
Speaker 4: is before the term telehealth or telemedicine was even a thing. Okay,
Speaker 4: because it was so many years ago. She called my phone.
Speaker 4: There was no video conferencing even invented yet. So it
Speaker 4: was five pm on a Tuesday, and It was already
Speaker 4: day two of my cycle, and she said to me, Alice,
Speaker 4: if you're going to do this, you have to start
Speaker 4: tomorrow morning at seven am. So I had less than
Speaker 4: twenty four hours to make the biggest decision of my life.
Speaker 4: And at the time, I had a boyfriend who was
Speaker 4: working in the front bedroom of my home. Okay, I
Speaker 4: walk into that room and say, okay, I'm all excited.
Speaker 4: We have to freeze embryos. And he looked at me
Speaker 4: and he goes, We're not going to do that. And
Speaker 4: I said, what do you mean We're not going to
Speaker 4: do that. He said, no, I'm not going to do
Speaker 4: that with you. I said, why wouldn't you do that
Speaker 4: with me? And he told me then that he didn't
Speaker 4: think we had a future together. And in that moment,
Speaker 4: I was on my own. So when I walked into
Speaker 4: the fergility clinic the next morning, they handed me a
Speaker 4: catalog of sperm donors. So can you imagine, Okay, I'm
Speaker 4: already dealing with cancer, completely overwhelmed, and I get handed
Speaker 4: a catalog of sperm donors and it was all these statistics.
Speaker 4: So it looked like I was picking a basketball team
Speaker 4: and being like, who do I think is going to
Speaker 4: be MVP this year. And I had a friend with
Speaker 4: me at the appointment who said, no, I think this
Speaker 4: is going to be so much fun. And I handed
Speaker 4: the catalog to her and I was like, great, you pick.
Speaker 4: So part of the journey was such a massive learning
Speaker 4: curve so fast, But going through fertility preservation helped me
Speaker 4: focus on life after cancer. So I always fundamentally deeply
Speaker 4: believed I'm going to get through this cancer. But I
Speaker 4: also knew I wanted to live the life I imagined afterwards,
Speaker 4: and that whole experience started that journey what is life
Speaker 4: going to look like after I get through all this trauma?
Speaker 4: But for me, I felt the fertility preservation experience was
Speaker 4: incredibly life affirming.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: I loved the self injections because it felt like I
Speaker 4: finally was doing something for my life rather than having
Speaker 4: the medical community do something to me.
Speaker 3: And so talk about how that experience led you to
Speaker 3: the founding of Fertile Action and med Answers.
Speaker 4: Well, I literally walked out of the fertility clinic that
Speaker 4: same day. The business manager had handed me kind of
Speaker 4: like pushed a piece of paper across her desk to
Speaker 4: show me how expensive the treatment was going to be.
Speaker 4: It was a twenty thousand dollars expense, and I know
Speaker 4: almost flipped out. I thought, Wow, am I going to
Speaker 4: do this? And you could see the look on her face.
Speaker 4: She almost felt devastated that in my time of need,
Speaker 4: she couldn't just give this to me. My friend Jen
Speaker 4: was on the phone with the only nonprofit that existed
Speaker 4: at the time, who basically was telling her I don't qualify.
Speaker 4: I meanwhile, was on the phone with my American Express
Speaker 4: card getting an increased limit. So that moment was the
Speaker 4: gate first game changer, because I walked out of the
Speaker 4: office and I looked at my friend Jen, and I said,
Speaker 4: we're going to start a nonprofit. We're going to fix this.
Speaker 4: I felt offended that there would be a financial criteria
Speaker 4: to determine who gets help and who doesn't. I think,
Speaker 4: you're thirty one years old, you're at the prime of
Speaker 4: your career. You're still climbing the ladder. You haven't made it.
Speaker 4: I barely had enough years to, you know, put into
Speaker 4: a four oh one k or an ira.
Speaker 5: I don't have a nest egg.
Speaker 4: You know, this was not something that I felt like
Speaker 4: we needed to make people prove that they have financial need.
Speaker 4: The cancer is the need, and I was offended that
Speaker 4: insurance didn't cover it, and insurance was willing to cover
Speaker 4: a wig, they were willing to cover reconstructive breasts, and
Speaker 4: so it seemed that society was telling me it's more
Speaker 4: important to us that you look like a woman when
Speaker 4: you're done with this than actually produce offspring like a woman.
Speaker 4: I was really disturbed by that. So that was the
Speaker 4: first pivotal moment of starting a charity. Was because I
Speaker 4: wanted to educate, I wanted to advocate, and.
Speaker 3: So talk about how that passion ultimately evolved into the
Speaker 3: launch of oval Health in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 4: Well, what ended up happening is I was doing all
Speaker 4: this advocacy work and all this legislative change, and I
Speaker 4: was educating all up and down California. But I also
Speaker 4: was witnessing the spread of misinformation on Facebook groups. At
Speaker 4: the time, I knew a lot of clinicians and I
Speaker 4: had them on text, and so these women were asking
Speaker 4: questions on these groups and I was able to get
Speaker 4: an answer within fifteen minutes from my professional network. So
Speaker 4: I thought, Okay, well, there's got to be a better
Speaker 4: way to do this. So with my business partner, the
Speaker 4: illustrious doctor Santiago Munet, who's a world renowned reproductive geneticist
Speaker 4: and researcher, I emailed him and I said, we got
Speaker 4: to do something about this. There's got to be a
Speaker 4: digital way to let everyone have access to the people
Speaker 4: that he and I know, and they should be able
Speaker 4: to ask questions in a safe, protected environment by actual experts,
Speaker 4: not their peers pretending to be an expert. We all
Speaker 4: have that person who's like, well, I had this experience
Speaker 4: and is therefore my experience pertains to your experience.
Speaker 5: And it's just not personalized at all.
Speaker 4: So I thought, with technology where it's at, there's no
Speaker 4: reason not to create an app that can can the
Speaker 4: public with a trusted network of professionals. That was the
Speaker 4: first thing that we did and we ran that for years.
Speaker 4: So we have over ninety thousand pieces of clinically validated content,
Speaker 4: multidisciplinary specialists who have answered patient questions as volunteers, which
Speaker 4: is extraordinary. But what we saw in the data, because
Speaker 4: we collected so much health information on our users, we
Speaker 4: saw that they weren't being diagnosed with infertility, yet they
Speaker 4: had been infertile for more than three years, and because
Speaker 4: they weren't diagnosed with infertility, they also weren't being diagnosed
Speaker 4: with the underlying conditions causing infertility. So to me, infertility
Speaker 4: is a frustrating diagnosis because it's based on time. It's
Speaker 4: not based on labs, it's not based on imaging, it's
Speaker 4: not based on anything except you don't have the outcome
Speaker 4: that you want in the timeframe that the professional societies
Speaker 4: has deemed relevant. If you're under the age of thirty
Speaker 4: five and haven't gotten pregnant the old fashioned way in
Speaker 4: a year, you have a disease diagnosis infertility. The medical
Speaker 4: community wasn't telling women that in the same way that
Speaker 4: I had someone call me and say, I'm sorry to
Speaker 4: break the bad news you have breast cancer. If we
Speaker 4: don't know that somebody has infertility, then they're not looking
Speaker 4: at the underlying cause. So you have women who are
Speaker 4: trying to figure out what's going on, and they're they're
Speaker 4: turning to Facebook groups, or they're turning to other online communities.
Speaker 4: They're trying to take this supplement that supplement, but they're
Speaker 4: not really going through a proper diagnostic journey. And we
Speaker 4: wanted to solve that. So Obi guindes. Even though we
Speaker 4: think of them as the ones that deliver the babies,
Speaker 4: they're actually not trained infertility. They're not trained in diagnostics
Speaker 4: for infertility, and they're not trained in optimizing fertility. And
Speaker 4: then you have the IVF doctors that are the most
Speaker 4: extreme treatment possible that has helped millions of babies be
Speaker 4: born worldwide and is a wonderful treatment, but it doesn't
Speaker 4: need to be the first line of treatment. There are
Speaker 4: so oh many conditions that can actually be treated to
Speaker 4: help restore natural fecundity, meaning someone's ability to ovulate on
Speaker 4: their own at the right time of the month, to
Speaker 4: ensure that the size of the egg is optimal, to
Speaker 4: ensure that the timing of the egg release is optimal,
Speaker 4: and to ensure that sperm has the best possible chance
Speaker 4: of getting to the egg for a fertilization event to happen.
Speaker 4: When you look at all the optimization steps that are possible,
Speaker 4: it's a miracle that anybody gets pregnant on their own. Okay,
Speaker 4: it really is. And I think we're all raised with
Speaker 4: the idea that when we want to have a baby,
Speaker 4: we think it's going to be easy and it's going
Speaker 4: to be fine. Because we've spent all of our lives
Speaker 4: telling young people how not to get pregnant, that we
Speaker 4: make it seem like they're going to look at a
Speaker 4: man and get pregnant, and that's just not what's So
Speaker 4: we can help same sex couples optimize their attempt as well,
Speaker 4: and that is both on the male side and on
Speaker 4: the female side. So really, Ovumhealth was created to solve
Speaker 4: a huge gap that exists, and it's not just in
Speaker 4: the United States, it's worldwide between an OBIGI and an
Speaker 4: IVF doctor, so that we can get all those diagnostics
Speaker 4: done and then we can do medical nutrition therapy first
Speaker 4: to start optimizing each step of the fertility process and
Speaker 4: then use pharmaceutical solutions to kind of take over the
Speaker 4: cycle ovulatory experience to make sure that we are helping
Speaker 4: to craft the most effective and efficient time to intercourse
Speaker 4: cycle possible.
Speaker 3: So your situation was just so awful right where you
Speaker 3: had to pay for your treatment on an MX card.
Speaker 3: I'm curious what the current state of access is for
Speaker 3: family building treatments in the US. Is there's still this
Speaker 3: higher socioeconomic barrier for fertility treatment compared to other health issues.
Speaker 4: Sure, there definitely is and it varies widely. So with
Speaker 4: Ovum Health, we are practicing medicine in a lane that's
Speaker 4: covered by insurance. We're not doing anything that falls outside
Speaker 4: of your normal kind of consultative approach to accessing specialty care.
Speaker 4: Because of this, we're covered by insurance. There are some
Speaker 4: innovative testing platforms that are not covered by insurance, so
Speaker 4: we work with our patients to help them with all
Speaker 4: their out of pocket expenses. We do offer financing in house.
Speaker 4: We offer payment plans. We try to be as flexible
Speaker 4: as possible to make sure that there is no socioeconomic barrier.
Speaker 4: I have one hundred and seventy six insurance contracts as
Speaker 4: of today in eight states. I intend to be in
Speaker 4: all fifty states by the end of next year with
Speaker 4: insurance contracts. My hunches will have over six hundred contracts.
Speaker 4: That includes Medicaid. So there are plenty of things that
Speaker 4: Medicaid pays for. And it's not just our ability to
Speaker 4: help someone have a healthy pregnancy, it's our ability to
Speaker 4: help someone have a healthy baby, and that means that
Speaker 4: we have to support women through the reproductive continuum. So
Speaker 4: what Ovum is really creating is being the glue at
Speaker 4: kind of every step of that experience for a woman
Speaker 4: in the IVF setting. Yes, there are still huge gaps
Speaker 4: in coverage. There are a lot of programs out there,
Speaker 4: like Carrot and Progeny that have targeted large employer market
Speaker 4: as a specialty insurance product. Only point three percent of
Speaker 4: reproductive age people work for large employers, So it's really
Speaker 4: important that we still access IVF coverage through your basic
Speaker 4: health insurance plans like the etna's and the Blues and
Speaker 4: the United Healthcares. That's where you still have coverage gap,
Speaker 4: and so much of that is dependent on who your
Speaker 4: employer coverage is through, and so much of that is
Speaker 4: if you're self insured or if you're on Medicaid, et cetera.
Speaker 4: So Medicaid currently doesn't cover infertility services, and Medicaid pays
Speaker 4: for about half of the pregnancies and live births in America.
Speaker 4: So we have to start thinking more broadly about treatment options.
Speaker 3: And so walk us through a typical patient journey with
Speaker 3: opum health from first contact final outcome. What are all
Speaker 3: the ways that ovum helps them build a family.
Speaker 5: Yes, that's a great question.
Speaker 4: So really the first thing that we're looking at is
Speaker 4: a diagnostic journey that we want to get people through rapidly.
Speaker 4: So in a traditional healthcare environment, if you have to
Speaker 4: see the number of specialists that are under one roof
Speaker 4: at ovum, it probably would take you six months to
Speaker 4: see all of them, and you'd have six to twelve
Speaker 4: different appointments because that's how many specialists we're bringing onto
Speaker 4: your case. So you initially meet with our nurse practitioner
Speaker 4: to review your medical history. We do ask you to
Speaker 4: fill out quite a bit of data because we want
Speaker 4: it to be again as efficient as possible for you.
Speaker 4: We don't want to waste your time. We want to
Speaker 4: make sure that we are well prepared to be able
Speaker 4: to ask all the follow up questions and review that
Speaker 4: medical history so that we can turn around and order
Speaker 4: your lab work right away. So typically when someone calls
Speaker 4: in to us, we actually book four appointments for them
Speaker 4: at once so that they don't have any delays. We
Speaker 4: book that first visit, we book the lab appointment for
Speaker 4: them at their local lab. After the lab visit, then
Speaker 4: our patients get to meet with the lead clinician on
Speaker 4: their case, and that's usually when they get an initial
Speaker 4: diagnosis from the lab work and the history that we reviewed.
Speaker 4: At that point, then we probably need to send them
Speaker 4: for imaging. We need to do fallopian tube evaluation, uterinevaluation,
Speaker 4: and ovarianvaluation, and they then get paired with a nurse navigator.
Speaker 4: That nurse navigator's job is to help them understand what
Speaker 4: their treatment options are going to be. The doctor had
Speaker 4: already reviewed the treatment options. However, as we all know,
Speaker 4: we are trying to take in as much information as
Speaker 4: we can in that doctor visit, and then as soon
Speaker 4: as we get in the car, as soon as we
Speaker 4: get off the phone, we think of thirty questions to ask,
Speaker 4: so we pair them with a nurse navigator so that
Speaker 4: they have somebody to ask all those follow up questions efficiently.
Speaker 4: At that point, then we lay out kind of what
Speaker 4: the next three to four months of their life is
Speaker 4: going to look like. In all cases, we assign them
Speaker 4: a regil dietitian, so they have a nurse navigator that
Speaker 4: is the glue of their case and helping to facilitate
Speaker 4: every next step. They're assigned a registered dietitian, and they
Speaker 4: even get a patient advocate who's kind of advocating for
Speaker 4: their insurance, helping them understand what else they need where
Speaker 4: they need to order it. It could be a custom
Speaker 4: supplement list, it could be an at home continuous hormone
Speaker 4: monitoring kit. It could be their molecular sperm testing kit
Speaker 4: for their partner as well. So we line up kind
Speaker 4: of the diagnostic journey first, but in a lot of cases,
Speaker 4: we're already starting some medical nutrition therapy or medicated weight
Speaker 4: loss or working with the registered dietitian even alongside some
Speaker 4: of the other steps because we have some of the
Speaker 4: diagnoses already. We know people who are insulin resistant, so
Speaker 4: we know what kind of diet plan we need to
Speaker 4: help them with, we know the lifestyle changes we need to.
Speaker 5: Pair them with.
Speaker 4: We're even adding PT into our practice so that we
Speaker 4: can customize exercise plans specific to somebody's condition.
Speaker 3: But opal health is also launching during this pivotal moment
Speaker 3: in it, and so I'm curious. Was it always the
Speaker 3: plan to leverage this technology for ovum or was it
Speaker 3: more of an organic evolution to this point.
Speaker 5: It was both.
Speaker 4: It was always my intention that we needed to have
Speaker 4: AI enabled technology to be able to scale faster and
Speaker 4: to also be able to improve quality control across so
Speaker 4: many states, because how do you really do that I
Speaker 4: need to upscale all different levels of healthcare providers. Then
Speaker 4: how do we efficiently kind of manage that clinical excellence experience?
Speaker 4: And the only way to really do that is to
Speaker 4: create clinical decisions support tools that everybody utilizes that are
Speaker 4: very easy to make sure that we're managing our care
Speaker 4: in a consistent fashion. How else could we possibly do
Speaker 4: it state by state? You know, experience level varies, So
Speaker 4: that was always kind of the plan. The area that
Speaker 4: I didn't even know was possible was this area of
Speaker 4: being able to reach the massive truly through an AI
Speaker 4: tool through the Fertility Answers app. So when IBM approached
Speaker 4: me for that partnership, the bells went off. I always
Speaker 4: knew that I couldn't scale voluntary humans. I have a
Speaker 4: network of over four hundred medical professionals across so many disciplines.
Speaker 4: We're talking mds, genetic counselors, geneticists, psychologists, obiginnds, naturopaths, functional
Speaker 4: medicine docs. I have about thirteen different specialties, all willing
Speaker 4: to answer free questions. But relying on that voluntary basis
Speaker 4: is not something that can scale. It's a beautiful thing
Speaker 4: that they're doing, and it's created ninety thousand pieces of
Speaker 4: clinically validated content. But we needed to move beyond kind
Speaker 4: of the initial interaction being a human answering the question
Speaker 4: and leverage.
Speaker 5: AI to be able to do that.
Speaker 4: So what was really extraordinary for me is that I
Speaker 4: had my eyes kind of opened by IBM to see
Speaker 4: what was possible for my practice with AI. Once that
Speaker 4: seed was planted, then the world opened up. We have
Speaker 4: four tools that we're working on right now. The first
Speaker 4: has already been integrated, which is the Fertility Answers App.
Speaker 4: So the initial experience for women and mostly women, because
Speaker 4: they're the ones download the app, but we take men.
Speaker 4: I promise we're not excluding them. We see both. It
Speaker 4: takes two and they have the opportunity to access all
Speaker 4: that content in a personalized way through the IBM Watson
Speaker 4: Assistant chatbot, so that is incredible. We're also deploying a
Speaker 4: revenue cycle management tool. You can imagine with all these
Speaker 4: different contracts that I have one hundred and seventy six
Speaker 4: contracts and eventually I'll have probably six hundred contracts. They
Speaker 4: all have different price lists. Makes it very difficult to
Speaker 4: forecast what's in my electronic medical record system. For that
Speaker 4: day based on the type of insurance. Now, even within
Speaker 4: one insurance contract, they might have hundreds of insurance plans
Speaker 4: that have all various mechanisms for what we can expect
Speaker 4: to build. You might have co insurance, you might have
Speaker 4: a deductible, you might have a copay, and it varies
Speaker 4: planned to plan. We're dealing with a level of medical
Speaker 4: literacy in this country that is very low, and the
Speaker 4: layperson doesn't understand their insurance all the time.
Speaker 5: How am I.
Speaker 4: Expected to be able to deal with truly thousands of
Speaker 4: combinations of insurance plans based on these contracts. You have
Speaker 4: to have AI just to tackle that big data issue.
Speaker 5: So we have a.
Speaker 4: Revenue cycle management tool that is also helping us with
Speaker 4: an automated clinical workflow, and that's what a wonderful partner
Speaker 4: we have called cloud Astra, who is also in the
Speaker 4: IBM ecosystem. So it's incredibly exciting to know that I
Speaker 4: can come out of a startup mode profitably because we're
Speaker 4: deploying smart tools from the beginning. Then we also have
Speaker 4: in development our Fertility Clinical Decisions Support tool to really
Speaker 4: scale the clinical experience so that we're analyzing genomic data,
Speaker 4: lab data, clinical data and even self reported data from
Speaker 4: our users in a way that helps our clinicians know
Speaker 4: what to do next. And that's all based on standard
Speaker 4: of care guidelines, all evidence based medicine, but built into
Speaker 4: a really useful tool to help them do their job
Speaker 4: more efficiently. Recently, the International Guidelines for PCOS polycystic Ovarian
Speaker 4: Syndrome updated guidelines. There were two hundred individual points in
Speaker 4: these guidelines. Two hundred and that's for one condition. So
Speaker 4: imagine you multiply that across dozens of conditions. You can't
Speaker 4: expect a human to retain that information and to be
Speaker 4: able to recall it right when someone's in front of them.
Speaker 4: So tools that have IBMS AI enabled are really critical
Speaker 4: to do an exceptional job in healthcare. And then the
Speaker 4: fourth tool that we're creating with IBM is a medical
Speaker 4: nutrition therapy tool so that we can scale beyond our
Speaker 4: registered dietitians and be able to help women really optimize
Speaker 4: their fertility, health and wellness by having personalized approach to
Speaker 4: medical nutrition therapy.
Speaker 5: And that also requires AI.
Speaker 3: So when you decided to go big and introduce AI
Speaker 3: in so many different ways to scale up your app
Speaker 3: and your business more broadly, why did you pick IBM
Speaker 3: as a partner?
Speaker 4: IBM was an easy yes when we were approached about
Speaker 4: this partnership for so many reasons. I'm not an AI startup,
Speaker 4: I'm a healthcare startup, and it's very important that I
Speaker 4: don't waste resources trying to figure out AI all by ourselves.
Speaker 4: We needed to be very fast to market and needed
Speaker 4: to be with a trusted partner. IBM brought that to
Speaker 4: the team right away. But secondarily, the IBM team that
Speaker 4: I've been exposed to is incredible. So from a partnership standpoint,
Speaker 4: the team has made it easy, joyful. There's some of
Speaker 4: the smartest people that I've had the pleasure to work with,
Speaker 4: and so I think the culture of what IBM's created
Speaker 4: for startups is very unique and truly every single aspect
Speaker 4: of the team that I've worked with, from the developers
Speaker 4: themselves that build labs, to the customer success team to
Speaker 4: my day to day team, I mean, my goodness, it
Speaker 4: is just a dream team. So IBM made it as
Speaker 4: easy as possible for me to say yes.
Speaker 2: Alice really helped open my eyes to the challenges facing
Speaker 2: providers in an industry as sensitive and individualized as fertility care.
Speaker 2: It makes sense that scalability would be an issue, but
Speaker 2: with the help of AI, ovum Health has been able
Speaker 2: to solve a few of the extraordinary challenges of bringing effective,
Speaker 2: affordable fertility care to the general public, from multiplying the
Speaker 2: impact of its medical professional network to enabling more accurate
Speaker 2: forecasting of complex contracts, patients are benefiting directly and indirectly
Speaker 2: from the integration of AI across the healthcare journey.
Speaker 3: A lot of people have nuanced health questions that are
Speaker 3: unique to them due to their own personal health history,
Speaker 3: maybe their lifestyle factors, or the specific medications they're taking.
Speaker 3: How does the Fertility Answers bot personalize all its responses.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a great question. So when we onboard our users,
Speaker 4: we do ask them to fill out quite a bit
Speaker 4: of health information, and we have ninety nine percent compliance
Speaker 4: rates on the health information that people fill out. So
Speaker 4: when you ask a question, you're asking it with all
Speaker 4: your health information already attached to it. The library of
Speaker 4: responses then shows you questions and answers of people who
Speaker 4: are similar to you. If that doesn't answer your question,
Speaker 4: you still have a chance to route your question to
Speaker 4: the same volunteer network of professionals that existed before the
Speaker 4: bot was there.
Speaker 3: And so some problems, especially those related to fertility and
Speaker 3: needle care, require human to human connection, right This is
Speaker 3: what we're built for as primates, to kind of engage
Speaker 3: with our families as the chatbot addresses such a personal
Speaker 3: health need. How easy is it for a doctor to
Speaker 3: interject or for a patient to request care from a doctor.
Speaker 4: Very easy, and that was super important to me. One
Speaker 4: of the things that I love the most out of
Speaker 4: IBM was that I had the chance to infuse empathy
Speaker 4: directly into the bot experience. I didn't want something that
Speaker 4: sounded or came off as robotic, but it is incredibly
Speaker 4: easy and the Watson Assistant flow for someone to request
Speaker 4: that immediate human connection. We have a chat feature that
Speaker 4: gets to a patient advocate right away, We have a
Speaker 4: feature where they can route their question to that network
Speaker 4: of experts right away, and we have a feature where
Speaker 4: they can book a console with one of our medical
Speaker 4: professionals right away as well.
Speaker 3: So you have over sixty seven thousand users now, which
Speaker 3: is kind of a meat. How do you get them
Speaker 3: to feel the kind of trust and empathy people expect
Speaker 3: from their healthcare provider? Especially in the fertility space.
Speaker 4: In our case, we have a very human brand, so
Speaker 4: from the moment that someone interacts with our content, they're
Speaker 4: already experiencing clinically validated answers in the form of video.
Speaker 4: We don't ask people to download and register our app
Speaker 4: upon the first touch point. We are infusing medical education
Speaker 4: into the community through video so that they can start
Speaker 4: to build that brand trust with us from the beginning.
Speaker 4: What I've noticed is that because our brand is such
Speaker 4: human connection, we've built up so much trusts. And it's
Speaker 4: not just about the app experience. It's also how active
Speaker 4: our Instagram is, where we answer live questions for people
Speaker 4: in Instagram lives, so there's multiple ways for people to
Speaker 4: get served for virtually free and an unlimited fashion. Did
Speaker 4: all the providers for them so they don't have to
Speaker 4: do that. So I think that there's multiple things that
Speaker 4: go into building brand trust, and that's why.
Speaker 5: We show sort of the profile.
Speaker 4: Of someone who asked a similar question already, so that
Speaker 4: they can find themselves in that Oh wow, that person
Speaker 4: who asked my similar question or almost my exact same
Speaker 4: question also is thirty seven years old, or also has
Speaker 4: PCOS or also has ENDO, so there are different ways
Speaker 4: that we are able to kind of get into the
Speaker 4: psychology of our community to make sure that they feel heard.
Speaker 4: And I think whenever anybody feels truly heard, then that
Speaker 4: trust is possible.
Speaker 3: So this season of Smart Talks features new creators, visionaries
Speaker 3: like you who are creatively applying technology in business to
Speaker 3: drive change. I know that you have a Bachelor of
Speaker 3: Science in Media, Arts and Design. How does this creative
Speaker 3: background inform what you do is CEO of OPM Health.
Speaker 5: Oh, that's such a great question.
Speaker 4: They use my degree every single day and I'm not
Speaker 4: a chickens, so I've had that degree for quite a while, Lorie.
Speaker 4: Every CEO has kind of a I would say leading
Speaker 4: skill set.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: There are some that are leading financial type people. There's
Speaker 4: some that are leading kind of business to business salespeople.
Speaker 4: I am very much a leading marketing type CEO. So
Speaker 4: for me, the patient experience, the user experience, that human
Speaker 4: experience is kind of everything that I stand for and
Speaker 4: I'm about and it must be authentic. And because of
Speaker 4: the background that I have, I love nothing more than
Speaker 4: co producing with my chief storyteller, Joshua Noonan, Who's been
Speaker 4: with me forever. We love co producing content. It could
Speaker 4: be a twenty two second video that that's educational, it
Speaker 4: could be an hour long course, you know, for professionals.
Speaker 4: And so I do feel that I bring that media,
Speaker 4: arts and design background to kind of my type of leadership.
Speaker 5: And storytelling is kind of everything. You know.
Speaker 4: Being a great story tell no matter what your brand
Speaker 4: is or no matter the type of leader you are,
Speaker 4: is the way that kind of attracts and connects people
Speaker 4: to us. And it's fortunate that social media has created
Speaker 4: this visual world that we live in and this video
Speaker 4: based world that we live in as well.
Speaker 3: So you're an activist for accessibility and inclusivity and healthcare.
Speaker 3: If you could look years down the line, how do
Speaker 3: you see creative applications of technology like fertility answers changing
Speaker 3: how we talk about women's health.
Speaker 4: Well, first, I think that these tools need to be
Speaker 4: covered by insurance. So I think what is going to
Speaker 4: be the game changer in the value based care market
Speaker 4: is that insurance is going to figure out that by
Speaker 4: creating a reimbursement mechanism for more digital therapeutics but also
Speaker 4: for digital diagnostic tools, is going to lead to a
Speaker 4: much more cost effective healthcare society no matter what kind
Speaker 4: of insurance type or plan that we have. So on
Speaker 4: the accessibility side, those tools are really meaningful to the future.
Speaker 5: Of health healthcare.
Speaker 4: I would also say that technology creates a more democratized
Speaker 4: health care environment. A lot of our patients live four
Speaker 4: hours from a type of specialist that they need four hours,
Speaker 4: you know, a lot of them are at least an
Speaker 4: hour an hour and a half from a major lab.
Speaker 4: So leveraging these types of tools gets them the answers
Speaker 4: that they need faster, which will lead to better intervention earlier.
Speaker 4: And that's where we come down to healthy mamas, healthy babies,
Speaker 4: make happy families.
Speaker 3: Awesome. That's a great way to end. Thank you Alis
Speaker 3: so much for being with us on smart Talks today.
Speaker 3: It is such great work that you were doing to
Speaker 3: help women in families, So thank you for all your
Speaker 3: work and thanks for our chat today.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Laurie.
Speaker 4: It's such an honor to get to be on Smart
Speaker 4: Talks and it was a delightful conversation.
Speaker 2: That about wraps up today's episode. I want to send
Speaker 2: a huge thank you to Laurie and Alice for deepening
Speaker 2: the way I think about AI's expanding role in the future.
Speaker 2: Of healthcare. It was illuminating to hear a first hand
Speaker 2: account of how providers are already integrating the power of transparent,
Speaker 2: human centric generative AI through Watson X. It's enabling telehealth
Speaker 2: platforms to multiply their impact and is quickly becoming essential
Speaker 2: to offering comprehensive care to patients. As our conversation with
Speaker 2: Laurie and Alice showed, accessibility has long been an issue
Speaker 2: facing patients, particularly in the fertility space. With the help
Speaker 2: of technology from IBM, ovum Health is meaningfully expanding its
Speaker 2: reach to women who previously may not have been able
Speaker 2: to access personalized fertility care. Steps like these are helping
Speaker 2: to usher in a new age in healthcare, one that
Speaker 2: holds incredible potential for both patients and providers. Yet, as
Speaker 2: new technology is implemented, it needs to be done with
Speaker 2: responsibility and care. Using emerging technologies in sensitive feels like fertility,
Speaker 2: it's the power to transform how people receive care. But,
Speaker 2: as Alice emphasized, only if patient needs are central to
Speaker 2: how we implement solutions. Ovum Health already has over sixty
Speaker 2: seven thousand users. Just think of all the pregnancies that
Speaker 2: have been supported by the platform. And as we just heard,
Speaker 2: this is only the beginning. It's exciting to see how
Speaker 2: this new technology will continue to reach people in need.
Speaker 2: Smart Talks with IBM is produced by Matt Romano, Joey
Speaker 2: fish Ground and Jacob Goldstein. We're edited by Lydia Jane Kott.
Speaker 2: Our engineers are Jason Gambrel, Sarah Bruguier, and Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 2: Theme song by Gramoscope. Special thanks to Andy Kelly, Kathy Callahan,
Speaker 2: and the Eight Bar and IBM teams, as well as
Speaker 2: the Pushkin marketing team. Smart Talks with IBM is a
Speaker 2: production of Pushkin Industries and Ruby Studio at iHeartMedia. To
Speaker 2: find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Malcolm glam