Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's Robert and Joe here. Today we've got
Speaker 1: something a little bit different to share with you. It
Speaker 1: is a new season of the Smart Talks with IBM
Speaker 1: podcast series.
Speaker 2: Today we are witnessed to one of those rare moments
Speaker 2: in history, the rise of an innovative technology with the
Speaker 2: potential to radically transform business and society forever. The technology,
Speaker 2: of course, is artificial intelligence, and it's the central focus
Speaker 2: for this new season of Smart Talks with IBM.
Speaker 1: Join hosts from your favorite Pushkin podcasts as they talk
Speaker 1: with industry experts and leaders to explore how businesses can
Speaker 1: integrate AI into their workflows and help drive real change
Speaker 1: in this new era of AI. And of course, host
Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell will be there to guide you through the
Speaker 1: season and throw in his two cents as well.
Speaker 2: Look out for new episodes of Smart Talks with IBM
Speaker 2: every other week on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 2: wherever you get your podcasts, and learn more at IBM
Speaker 2: dot com slash smart Talks.
Speaker 3: Hello, Hello, Welcome to Smart Talks IBM, a podcast from
Speaker 3: Pushkin Industries, iHeartRadio and IBM. I'm Malcolm Glamwell. This season
Speaker 3: we're continuing our conversations with new creators visionaries who are
Speaker 3: creatively applying technology in business to drive change, but with
Speaker 3: a focus on the transformative power of artificial intelligence and
Speaker 3: what it means to leverage AI as a game changing
Speaker 3: multiplier for your business. Today's episode is a case study
Speaker 3: of sorts as AI expands its reach to different industries.
Speaker 3: The healthcare profession is on the forefront of adoption. The
Speaker 3: integration of AI into the healthcare industry is fostering a
Speaker 3: more inclusive and efficient healthcare system. Pushkin's very own doctor
Speaker 3: Lori Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast, sat down
Speaker 3: for a conversation with Alice Creeshy. Alice is the co
Speaker 3: founder and CEO of fertility care provider ovum Health. Founded
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty three. Ovum Health consists of a multi
Speaker 3: specialty group of board certified experts, physicians, nutritionists, and patient
Speaker 3: advocates who are passionate about helping moms to be with
Speaker 3: pre pregnancy, pregnancy and postpartum health care. As an online platform,
Speaker 3: they are able to diagnose, treat, and manage conditions from
Speaker 3: the comfort of patients homes. Alice became an advocate for
Speaker 3: accessible family planning when she was diagnosed with breast cancer
Speaker 3: at age thirty one. As a healthcare activist, author, cancer
Speaker 3: and infertility survivor, she has dedicated her life to improving
Speaker 3: access to exceptional health care, regardless of income, insurance, religion, race, identity,
Speaker 3: or location. Alice and Laurie discuss the barriers to healthcare access,
Speaker 3: the ways in which AI can be leveraged to expand
Speaker 3: the reach of health care providers, and how ovum healths
Speaker 3: partnership with IBM and the use of the IBM Watson
Speaker 3: X Assistant platform has been enhancing the patient experience. Just
Speaker 3: a heads up before we dive in. This conversation touches
Speaker 3: on sensitive topics such as paternal health and fertility. Please
Speaker 3: take care when listening. Okay, let's get to the conversation.
Speaker 4: Alice, thank you so much for joining me. To start off,
Speaker 4: tell me a little bit about your current role.
Speaker 5: Hi, Laurie, thank you so much for having me today.
Speaker 5: I'm thrilled to be here. My current role is as
Speaker 5: co founder and CEO of ovum Health. We are a
Speaker 5: network of fertility telehealth clinics in the United States, and
Speaker 5: really my job is to make sure that all the
Speaker 5: people that we want to serve know that we exist,
Speaker 5: and to make sure that I create a sustainable company
Speaker 5: so that all the good work that my clinicians are
Speaker 5: doing really reach the millions, truly millions of people who
Speaker 5: need us.
Speaker 4: So your fertility journey began at thirty one when you
Speaker 4: were diagnosed with cancer. That must have been awful. Tell
Speaker 4: me about the days and weeks surrounding that news and
Speaker 4: what was your life like.
Speaker 5: Yes, the way that I've always described it is that
Speaker 5: the news almost hit the pause button on my life.
Speaker 5: And the extraordinary thing was that it became my full
Speaker 5: time job just managing all the diagnostic steps involved. So truly,
Speaker 5: for the first thirty days, I was in a vortex
Speaker 5: of all things cancer related, and I was one of
Speaker 5: the lucky ones. And that a friend asked me, are
Speaker 5: you going to freeze your eggs? I would never have
Speaker 5: even thought to ask about it had she not brought
Speaker 5: it up. I went into the fertility clinic, and really
Speaker 5: what was extraordinary is that the day before my appointment
Speaker 5: at the physical clinic, I had a telephone console. This
Speaker 5: is before the term telehealth or telemedicine was even a thing. Okay,
Speaker 5: because it was so many years ago. She called my phone.
Speaker 6: There was no.
Speaker 5: Video conferencing even invented yet. So it was five pm
Speaker 5: on a Tuesday, and it was already day two of
Speaker 5: my cycle, and she said to me, Alice, if you're
Speaker 5: going to do this, you have to start tomorrow morning
Speaker 5: at seven am. So I had less than twenty four
Speaker 5: hours to make the biggest decision of my life. And
Speaker 5: at the time, I had a boyfriend who was working
Speaker 5: in the front bedroom of my home. Okay, I walk
Speaker 5: into that room and say, okay, I'm all excited. We
Speaker 5: have to freeze embryos. And he looked at me and
Speaker 5: he goes, We're not going to do that. And I said,
Speaker 5: what do you mean, We're not going to do that?
Speaker 5: He said, no, I'm not going to do that with you.
Speaker 5: I said, why wouldn't you do that with me? And
Speaker 5: he told me then that he didn't think we had
Speaker 5: a future together. And in that moment, I was on
Speaker 5: my own. So when I walked into the Fergility clinic
Speaker 5: the next morning, they handed me a catalog of sperm donors.
Speaker 6: So can you imagine.
Speaker 5: Okay, I'm already dealing with cancer, completely overwhelmed, and I
Speaker 5: get handed a catalog of sperm donors and it was
Speaker 5: all these statistics, so it looked like I was picking
Speaker 5: a basketball team and like, who do I think is
Speaker 5: going to be MVP this year? And I had a
Speaker 5: friend with me at the appointment who said, no, I
Speaker 5: think this is going to be so much fun, and
Speaker 5: I handed the catalog to her and I.
Speaker 6: Was like, great, you pick.
Speaker 5: So part of the journey was such a massive learning
Speaker 5: curve so fast. But going through fertility preservation helped me
Speaker 5: focus on life after cancer. So I always fundamentally deeply
Speaker 5: believed I'm going to get through this cancer, but I
Speaker 5: also knew I wanted to live the life I imagined afterwards,
Speaker 5: and that whole experience started that journey what is life
Speaker 5: going to look like after I get through all this trauma?
Speaker 6: But for me, I felt.
Speaker 5: The fertility preservation experience was incredibly life affirming.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 5: I loved the self injections because it felt like I
Speaker 5: finally was doing something for my life rather than having
Speaker 5: the medical community do something to me.
Speaker 4: And so talk about how that experience led you to
Speaker 4: the founding of Fertile Action and med Answers.
Speaker 5: Well, I literally walked out of the fertility clinic that
Speaker 5: same day, the business manager had handed me kind of
Speaker 5: like pushed a piece of paper across her desk to
Speaker 5: show me how expensive the treatment was going to be.
Speaker 5: It was a twenty thousand dollars expense, and I know
Speaker 5: almost flipped out. I thought, Wow, am I going to
Speaker 5: do this? And you could see the look on her face.
Speaker 5: She almost felt devastated that in my time of need,
Speaker 5: she couldn't just give this to me. My friend Jen
Speaker 5: was on the phone with the only nonprofit that existed
Speaker 5: at the time, who basically was telling her I don't qualify.
Speaker 5: I meanwhile, was on the phone with my American Express
Speaker 5: card getting an increased limit. So that moment was the
Speaker 5: gate first game changer, because I walked out of the
Speaker 5: office and I looked at my friend Jen, and I said,
Speaker 5: we're going to start a nonprofit. We're going to fix this.
Speaker 5: I felt offended that there would be a financial criteria
Speaker 5: to determine who gets help and who doesn't. I think,
Speaker 5: you're thirty one years old, you're at the prime of
Speaker 5: your career. You're still climbing the ladder. You haven't made it.
Speaker 5: I barely had enough years to, you know, put into
Speaker 5: a four to one or an IRA I don't have
Speaker 5: a nest egg. You know, this was not something that
Speaker 5: I felt like we needed to make people prove that
Speaker 5: they have financial need. The cancer is the need, and
Speaker 5: I was offended that insurance didn't cover it, and insurance
Speaker 5: was willing to cover a wig, they were willing to
Speaker 5: cover reconstructive breasts, and so it seemed that society was
Speaker 5: telling me it's more important to us that you look
Speaker 5: like a woman when you're done with us than actually
Speaker 5: produce offspring like a woman. I was really disturbed by that.
Speaker 5: So that was the first pivotal moment of starting a charity,
Speaker 5: was because I wanted to educate, I wanted to advocate, and.
Speaker 4: So talk about how that passion ultimately evolved into the
Speaker 4: launch of Oval Health in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 5: Well, what ended up happening is I was doing all
Speaker 5: this advocacy work and all this legislative change, and I
Speaker 5: was educating all up and down California. But I also
Speaker 5: was witnessing the spread of misinformation on Facebook groups. At
Speaker 5: the time, I knew a lot of nisions and I
Speaker 5: had them on text, and so these women were asking
Speaker 5: questions on these groups and I was able to get
Speaker 5: an answer within fifteen minutes from my professional network. So
Speaker 5: I thought, okay, well, there's got to be a better
Speaker 5: way to do this. So with my business partner, the
Speaker 5: illustrious doctor Santiago Munet, who's a world renowned reproductive geneticist
Speaker 5: and researcher, I emailed him and I said, we got
Speaker 5: to do something about this. There's got to be a
Speaker 5: digital way to let everyone have access to the people
Speaker 5: that he and I know, and they should be able
Speaker 5: to ask questions in a safe, protected environment by actual experts,
Speaker 5: not their peers pretending to be an expert. We all
Speaker 5: have that person who's like, well, I had this experience
Speaker 5: and is therefore my experience pertains to your experience and
Speaker 5: it's just not personalized at all. So I thought, with
Speaker 5: technology where it's at, there's no reason not to create
Speaker 5: an app that can connect the public with a trusted
Speaker 5: network of professionals. That was the first thing that we
Speaker 5: did and we ran that for years. So we have
Speaker 5: over night thousand pieces of clinically validated content, multidisciplinary specialists
Speaker 5: who have answered patient questions as volunteers, which is extraordinary.
Speaker 5: But what we saw in the data because we collected
Speaker 5: so much health information on our users, We saw that
Speaker 5: they weren't being diagnosed with infertility, yet they had been
Speaker 5: infertile for.
Speaker 6: More than three years.
Speaker 5: And because they weren't diagnosed with infertility, they also weren't
Speaker 5: being diagnosed with the underlying conditions causing infertility. So, to me,
Speaker 5: infertility is a frustrating diagnosis because it's based on time.
Speaker 5: It's not based on labs, it's not based on imaging,
Speaker 5: it's not based on anything except you don't have the
Speaker 5: outcome that you want in the timeframe that the professional
Speaker 5: societies has deemed relevant. If you're under the age of
Speaker 5: thirty five and haven't gotten pregnant the old fashioned way
Speaker 5: in a year, you have a disease diagnosis of infertility.
Speaker 5: The medical community wasn't telling women that in the same
Speaker 5: way that I had someone call me and say, I'm
Speaker 5: sorry to break the bad news you have breast can answer.
Speaker 5: If we don't know that somebody has infertility, then they're
Speaker 5: not looking at the underlying cause. So you have women
Speaker 5: who are trying to figure out what's going on, and
Speaker 5: they're turning to Facebook groups or they're turning to other
Speaker 5: online communities. They're trying to take this supplement that supplement,
Speaker 5: but they're not really going through a proper diagnostic journey,
Speaker 5: and we wanted to solve that. So obe Guindes, even
Speaker 5: though we think of them as the ones that deliver
Speaker 5: the babies, they're actually not trained infertility. They're not trained
Speaker 5: in diagnostics for infertility, and they're not trained in optimizing fertility.
Speaker 5: And then you have the IVF doctors that are the
Speaker 5: most extreme treatment possible that has helped millions of babies
Speaker 5: be born worldwide and is a wonderful treatment, but it
Speaker 5: doesn't need to be the first line of treatment. There
Speaker 5: are so many conditions that can actually be treated to
Speaker 5: help restore natural fecundity, meaning someone's ability to obv on
Speaker 5: their own at the right time of the month, to
Speaker 5: ensure that the size of the egg is optimal, to
Speaker 5: ensure that the timing of the egg release is optimal,
Speaker 5: and to ensure that sperm has the best possible chance
Speaker 5: of getting to the egg for a fertilization event to happen.
Speaker 5: When you look at all the optimization steps that are possible,
Speaker 5: it's a miracle that anybody gets pregnant on their own. Okay,
Speaker 5: it really is. And I think we're all raised with
Speaker 5: the idea that when we want to have a baby,
Speaker 5: we think it's going to be easy and it's going
Speaker 5: to be fine. Because we've spent all of our lives
Speaker 5: telling young people how not to get pregnant, that we
Speaker 5: make it seem like they're going to look at a
Speaker 5: man and get pregnant, and that's just not what's So
Speaker 5: we can help same sex couples optimize their attempt as well.
Speaker 5: And you know that is both on the male side
Speaker 5: and on the female side. So really, Ovumhealth was created
Speaker 5: to solve a huge gap that exists, and it's not
Speaker 5: just in the United States, it's worldwide between an OBEGI
Speaker 5: and an IVF doctor. So we can get all those
Speaker 5: diagnostics done and then we can do medical nutrition therapy
Speaker 5: first to start optimizing each step of the fertility process,
Speaker 5: and then use pharmaceutical solutions to kind of take over
Speaker 5: the cycle ovulatory experience to make sure that we are
Speaker 5: helping to craft the most effective and efficient timed intercourse
Speaker 5: cycle possible.
Speaker 4: So your situation was just so awful right where you
Speaker 4: had to pay for your treatment on an AMEX card.
Speaker 4: I'm curious what the current state of access is for
Speaker 4: family building treatments in the US. Is there's still this
Speaker 4: higher socioeconomic barrier for fertility treatment compared to other health issues.
Speaker 5: Sure, there definitely is, and it varies widely. So with
Speaker 5: ovum Health, we are practicing medicine in a lane that's
Speaker 5: covered by insurance. We're not doing anything that falls outside
Speaker 5: of your normal kind of consultative approach to accessing specialty care.
Speaker 5: Because of this, we're covered by insurance. There are some
Speaker 5: innovative testing platforms that are not covered by insurance, so
Speaker 5: we work with our patients to help them with all
Speaker 5: their out of pocket expenses. We do offer financing in house,
Speaker 5: We offer payment plans. We try to be as flexible
Speaker 5: as possible to make sure that there is no socioeconomic barrier.
Speaker 5: I have one hundred and seventy six insurance contracts as
Speaker 5: of today in eight states. I intend to be in
Speaker 5: all fifty states by the end of next year with
Speaker 5: insurance contracts. My hunches will have over six hundred contracts.
Speaker 5: That includes Medicaid. So there are plenty of things that
Speaker 5: Medicaid pays for. And it's not just our ability to
Speaker 5: help someone have a healthy pregnancy, it's our ability to
Speaker 5: help someone have a healthy baby. And that means that
Speaker 5: we have to support women through the reproductive continuum. So
Speaker 5: what ovum is really creating is being the glue at
Speaker 5: kind of every step of that experience for a woman
Speaker 5: in the IVF setting. Yes, there are still huge gaps
Speaker 5: in coverage. There are a lot of programs out there,
Speaker 5: like Carrot and Progeny that have targeted large employer market
Speaker 5: as a specialty insurance product. Only point three percent of
Speaker 5: reproductive age people work for large employers, so it's really
Speaker 5: important that we still access IVF coverage through your basic
Speaker 5: health insurance plans like the etna's and the Blues and
Speaker 5: the United Healthcares. That's where you still have coverage gap,
Speaker 5: and so much of that is dependent on who your
Speaker 5: employer coverage is through, and so much of that is
Speaker 5: if you're self insured or if you're on Medicaid, et cetera.
Speaker 5: So Medicaid currently doesn't cover infertility services, and Medicaid pays
Speaker 5: for about half of the pregnancies and live births in America.
Speaker 5: So we have to start thinking more broadly about treatment options.
Speaker 4: And so walk us through a typical patient journey with
Speaker 4: ovumhealth from first contact to final outcome. What are all
Speaker 4: the ways that Ovum helps them build a family.
Speaker 6: Yes, that's a great question.
Speaker 5: So really, the first thing that we're looking at is
Speaker 5: a diagnostic journey that we want to get people through rapidly.
Speaker 5: So in a traditional healthcare environment, if you have to
Speaker 5: see the number of specialists that are under one roof
Speaker 5: at ovum, it probably would take you six months to
Speaker 5: see all of them, and you'd have six to twelve
Speaker 5: different appointments because that's how many specialists we're bringing onto
Speaker 5: your case. So you initially meet with our nurse practitioner
Speaker 5: to review your medical history. We do ask you to
Speaker 5: fill out quite a bit of data because we want
Speaker 5: it to be again as efficient as possible for you.
Speaker 5: We don't want to waste your time. We want to
Speaker 5: make sure that we are well prepared to be able
Speaker 5: to ask all the follow up questions and review that
Speaker 5: medical history so that we can turn around and order
Speaker 5: your lab work right away. So typically when someone calls
Speaker 5: in to us, we actually book four appointments for them
Speaker 5: at once so that they don't have any delays. We
Speaker 5: book that first visit, we book the lab appointment for
Speaker 5: them at their local lab. After the lab visit, then
Speaker 5: our patients get to meet with the lead clinician on
Speaker 5: their case, and that's usually when they get an initial
Speaker 5: diagnosis from the lab work and the history that we reviewed.
Speaker 5: At that point, then we probably need to send them
Speaker 5: for imaging. We need to do fallopian tube evaluation, uterinevaluation,
Speaker 5: and ovaryanvaluation, and they then get paired with a nurse navigator.
Speaker 5: That nurse navigator's job is to help them understand what
Speaker 5: their treatment options are going to be. The doctor had
Speaker 5: already reviewed the treatment options. However, as we all know,
Speaker 5: we are trying to take in as much information as
Speaker 5: we can in that doctor visit, and then as soon
Speaker 5: as we get in the car, as soon as we
Speaker 5: get off the phone, we think of thirty questions to ask,
Speaker 5: so we pair them with a nurse navigator so that
Speaker 5: they have somebody to ask all those follow up questions efficiently.
Speaker 5: At that point, then we lay out kind of what
Speaker 5: the next three to four months of their life is
Speaker 5: going to look like. In all cases, we assign them
Speaker 5: a registered dietitian, so they have a nurse navigator that
Speaker 5: is the glue of their case and helping to facilitate
Speaker 5: every next step. They're assigned a registered dietitian, and they
Speaker 5: even get a patient advocate who's kind of advocating for
Speaker 5: their insurance, helping them understand what else they need where
Speaker 5: they need to order it. It could be a custom
Speaker 5: supplement list, it could be an at home continuous hormone
Speaker 5: monitoring kit. It could be their molecular sperm testing kit
Speaker 5: for their partner as well. So we line up kind
Speaker 5: of the diagnostic journey first, but in a lot of cases,
Speaker 5: we're already starting some medical nutrition therapy or MEDICATEID weight loss,
Speaker 5: or working with the registered dietitian even alongside some of
Speaker 5: the other steps because we have some of the diagnoses already.
Speaker 5: We know people who are insulin resistant, so we know
Speaker 5: what kind of diet plan we need to help them with.
Speaker 5: We know the lifestyle changes we need to pair them with.
Speaker 5: We're even adding PT into our practice so that we
Speaker 5: can customize exercise plans specific to somebody's condition.
Speaker 4: But ovum Health is also launching during this pivotal moment
Speaker 4: in AI, and so I'm curious, was it always the
Speaker 4: plan to leverage this technology for ovum or was it
Speaker 4: more of an organic evolution to this point.
Speaker 6: It was both.
Speaker 5: It was always my intention that we needed to have
Speaker 5: AI enabled technology to be able to scale faster and
Speaker 5: to also be able to improve quality control across so
Speaker 5: many states, because how do you really do that? I
Speaker 5: need to upscale all different levels of healthcare providers, Then
Speaker 5: how do we efficiently kind of manage that clinical excellence experience?
Speaker 5: And the only way to really do that is to
Speaker 5: create clinical decisions support tools that everybody utilizes that are
Speaker 5: very easy to make sure that we're managing our care
Speaker 5: in a consistent fashion.
Speaker 6: How else could we possibly do it?
Speaker 5: State by state experience level varies, So that was always.
Speaker 6: Kind of the plan.
Speaker 5: The area that I didn't even know was possible was
Speaker 5: this area of being able to reach the masses truly
Speaker 5: through an AI tool through the Fertility Answers app. So
Speaker 5: when IBM approached me for that partnership, the bells went off.
Speaker 5: Always knew that I couldn't scale voluntary humans. I have
Speaker 5: a network of over four hundred medical professionals across so
Speaker 5: many disciplines. We're talking mds, genetic counselors, geneticists, psychologists, obigiinds, naturopaths,
Speaker 5: functional medicine docs. I have about thirteen different specialties, all
Speaker 5: willing to answer free questions but relying on that voluntary
Speaker 5: basis is not something that can scale. It's a beautiful
Speaker 5: thing that they're doing, and it's created ninety thousand pieces
Speaker 5: of clinically validated content, but we needed to move beyond
Speaker 5: kind of the initial interaction being a human answering the
Speaker 5: question and leverage.
Speaker 6: AI to be able to do that.
Speaker 5: So what was really extraordinary for me is that I
Speaker 5: had my eyes kind of opened by IBM to see
Speaker 5: what was possible for my practice with AI. Once that
Speaker 5: seed was planted, then the world opened up. We have
Speaker 5: four tools that we're working on right now. The first
Speaker 5: has already been integrated, which is the Fertility Answers App.
Speaker 5: So the initial experience for women and mostly women because
Speaker 5: they're the ones download the app, but we take men.
Speaker 6: I promise we're not excluding them. We see both.
Speaker 5: It takes two and they have the opportunity to access
Speaker 5: all that content in a personalized way through the IBM
Speaker 5: Watson Assistant chatbot, so that is incredible. We're also deploying
Speaker 5: a revenue cycle management tool. You can imagine with all
Speaker 5: these different contracts that I have one hundred and seventy
Speaker 5: six contracts and eventually I'll have probably six hundred contracts
Speaker 5: they all have different price lists. Makes it very difficult
Speaker 5: to forecast what's in my electronic medical record system for
Speaker 5: that day based on the type of insurance. Now, even
Speaker 5: within one insurance contract, they might have hundreds of insurance
Speaker 5: plans that have all various mechanisms for what we can
Speaker 5: and expect to build. You might have co insurance, you
Speaker 5: might have a deductible, you might have a copay, and
Speaker 5: it varies planned to plan. We're dealing with a level
Speaker 5: of medical literacy in this country that is very low,
Speaker 5: and the layperson doesn't understand their insurance all the time.
Speaker 6: How am I.
Speaker 5: Expected to be able to deal with truly thousands of
Speaker 5: combinations of insurance plans based on these contracts. You have
Speaker 5: to have AI just to tackle that big data issue.
Speaker 5: So we have a revenue cycle management tool that is
Speaker 5: also helping us with an automated clinical workflow, and that's
Speaker 5: what a wonderful partner we have called cloud Astra, who
Speaker 5: is also in the IBM ecosystem. So it's incredibly exciting
Speaker 5: to know that I can come out of a startup
Speaker 5: mode profitably because we're deploying smart tools from the beginning.
Speaker 5: Then we also have in development our fertility Clinical decision
Speaker 5: support tool to really scale the clinical experience so that
Speaker 5: we're analyzing genomic data, lab data, clinical data, and even
Speaker 5: self reported data from our users in a way that
Speaker 5: helps our clinicians know what to do next. And that's
Speaker 5: all based on standard of care guidelines, all evidence based medicine,
Speaker 5: but built into a really useful tool to help them
Speaker 5: do their job more efficiently. Recently, the International Guidelines for
Speaker 5: PCOS polycystic Ovarian Syndrome updated guidelines. There were two hundred
Speaker 5: individual points in these guidelines. Two hundred and that's for
Speaker 5: one condition, So imagine you multiply that across dozens of conditions.
Speaker 5: You can't expect a human to retain that information and
Speaker 5: to be able to recall it right when someone's in
Speaker 5: front of them. So tools that have IBMS AI enabled
Speaker 5: are really critical to do an exceptional job in healthcare.
Speaker 5: And then the fourth tool that we're creating with IBM
Speaker 5: is a medical nutrition therapy tool that we can scale
Speaker 5: beyond our registered dietitians and be able to help women
Speaker 5: really optimize their fertility, health and wellness by having personalized
Speaker 5: approach to medical nutrition therapy.
Speaker 6: And that also requires AI.
Speaker 4: So when you decided to go big and introduce AI
Speaker 4: in so many different ways to scale up your app
Speaker 4: and your business. More broadly, why did you pick IBM
Speaker 4: as a partner?
Speaker 5: IBM was an easy yes when we were approached about
Speaker 5: this partnership for so many reasons.
Speaker 6: I'm not an AI startup, I'm.
Speaker 5: A healthcare startup, and it's very important that I don't
Speaker 5: waste resources trying to figure out AI all by ourselves.
Speaker 5: We needed to be very fast to market and needed
Speaker 5: to be with a trusted partner. IBM brought that to
Speaker 5: the team right away. But secondarily, the IBM team that
Speaker 5: I've been exposed to is incredible. So from a partnership standpoint,
Speaker 5: the team has made it easy, joyful. There's some of
Speaker 5: the smartest people that I've had the play to work with,
Speaker 5: and so I think the culture of what IBMS created
Speaker 5: for startups is very unique and truly every single aspect
Speaker 5: of the team that I've worked with, from the developers
Speaker 5: themselves that build labs, to the customer success team to
Speaker 5: my day to day team, I mean, my goodness, it
Speaker 5: is just a dream team. So IBM made it as
Speaker 5: easy as possible for me to say yes.
Speaker 3: Alice really helped open my eyes to the challenges facing
Speaker 3: providers in an industry as sensitive and individualized as fertility care.
Speaker 3: It makes sense that scalability would be an issue, but
Speaker 3: with the help of AI, ovum Health has been able
Speaker 3: to solve a few of the extraordinary challenges of bringing effective,
Speaker 3: affordable fertility care to the general public, from multiplying the
Speaker 3: impact of its medical professional network to enabling more accurate
Speaker 3: forecasting of complex contracts. Patients are benefiting directly and indirectly
Speaker 3: from the integration of AI across the healthcare journey.
Speaker 4: A lot of people have nuanced health questions that are
Speaker 4: unique to them due to their own personal health history,
Speaker 4: maybe their lifestyle factors, or the specific medications they're taking.
Speaker 4: How does the Fertility Answers bot personalize all its responses.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 5: So when we onboard our users, we do ask them
Speaker 5: to fill out quite a bit of health information, and
Speaker 5: we have ninety nine percent compliance rates on the health
Speaker 5: information that people fill out. So when you ask a question,
Speaker 5: you're asking it with all your health information already attached
Speaker 5: to it. The library of responses then shows you questions
Speaker 5: and answers of people who are similar to you. If
Speaker 5: that doesn't answer your question, you still have a chance
Speaker 5: to route your question to the same volunteer network of
Speaker 5: professionals that existed before the bot was there.
Speaker 4: And so some problems, especially those related to fertility and
Speaker 4: needle care, require human to human connection, right This is
Speaker 4: what or built for as primates to kind of engage
Speaker 4: with our families as the chatbot addresses such a personal
Speaker 4: health need. How easy is it for a doctor to
Speaker 4: interject or for a patient to request care from a doctor.
Speaker 5: Very easy, and that was super important to me. One
Speaker 5: of the things that I love the most out of
Speaker 5: IBM was that I had the chance to infuse empathy
Speaker 5: directly into the bought experience. I didn't want something that
Speaker 5: sounded or came off as robotic, but it is incredibly
Speaker 5: easy and the Watson Assistant flow for someone to request
Speaker 5: that immediate human connection. We have a chat feature that
Speaker 5: gets to a patient advocate right away, We have a
Speaker 5: feature where they can route their question to that network
Speaker 5: of experts right away, and we have a feature where
Speaker 5: they can book a console with one of our medical
Speaker 5: professionals right away as well.
Speaker 4: So you have over sixty seven thousand users now, which
Speaker 4: is kind of amazing. How do you get them to
Speaker 4: feel the kind of trust and empathy people expect from
Speaker 4: their healthcare provider, especially in the fertility space.
Speaker 5: In our case, a very human brand, So from the
Speaker 5: moment that someone interacts with our content, they're already experiencing
Speaker 5: clinically validated answers in the form of video. We don't
Speaker 5: ask people to download and register our app upon the
Speaker 5: first touch point. We are infusing medical education into the
Speaker 5: community through video so that they can start to build
Speaker 5: that brand trust with us from the beginning. What I've
Speaker 5: noticed is that because our brand is such human connection,
Speaker 5: we've built up so much trust. And it's not just
Speaker 5: about the app experience. It's also how active our Instagram is,
Speaker 5: where we answer live questions for people in Instagram lives,
Speaker 5: so there's multiple ways for people to get served for
Speaker 5: virtually free and an unlimited fashion. We've vetted all the
Speaker 5: providers for them so they don't have to do that.
Speaker 5: So I think that there's multiple things that go into
Speaker 5: building brand trust, and that's why we show sort of
Speaker 5: the profile of someone who asked a similar question already,
Speaker 5: so that they can find themselves in that Oh wow,
Speaker 5: that person who asked my similar question or almost my
Speaker 5: exact same question, also is thirty seven years old or
Speaker 5: also has PCOS or also has endo. So there are
Speaker 5: different ways that we are able to kind of get
Speaker 5: into the psychology of our community to make sure that
Speaker 5: they feel heard. And I think whenever anybody feels truly heard,
Speaker 5: then that trust is possible.
Speaker 4: So this season of Smart Talks features new creators, visionaries
Speaker 4: like you who are creatively applying technology in business to
Speaker 4: drive change. I know that you have a Bachelor of
Speaker 4: Science in Media, Arts and Design. How does this creative
Speaker 4: background inform what you do? Is CEO of Opum Health.
Speaker 6: Oh, that's such a great question.
Speaker 5: That I use my degree every single day and I'm
Speaker 5: not a spring chicken, so I've had that degree for
Speaker 5: quite a while, Laurie. Every CEO has a i would
Speaker 5: say leading skill set. You know, there are some that
Speaker 5: are leading financial type people. There's some that are leading
Speaker 5: kind of business to business salespeople. I am very much
Speaker 5: a leading marketing type CEO. So for me, the patient experience,
Speaker 5: the user experience, that human experience is kind of everything
Speaker 5: that I stand for and I'm about and it must
Speaker 5: be authentic. And because of the background that I have,
Speaker 5: I love nothing more than co producing with my chief storyteller,
Speaker 5: Joshua Noonan, who's been with me forever. We love co
Speaker 5: producing content. It could be a twenty two second video
Speaker 5: that that's educational, it could be an hour long course,
Speaker 5: you know, for professionals. And so I do feel that
Speaker 5: I bring that media, arts and design background to kind
Speaker 5: of my type of leadership, and storytelling is kind of everything.
Speaker 5: You know, Being a great storyteller, no matter what your
Speaker 5: brand is or no matter the type of leader you are,
Speaker 5: is the way that kind of attracts and connects people
Speaker 5: to us. And it's you know, fortunate that social media
Speaker 5: has created this visual world that we live in and
Speaker 5: this video based world that we live in as well.
Speaker 4: So you're an activist for accessibility and inclusivity and healthcare.
Speaker 4: If you could look years down the line, how do
Speaker 4: you see creative applications of technology like fertility answers changing
Speaker 4: how we talk about women's health.
Speaker 5: Well, first, I think that these tools need to be
Speaker 5: covered by insurance. So I think what is going to
Speaker 5: be the game changer in the value based care market
Speaker 5: is that insurance is going to figure out that by
Speaker 5: creating a reimbursement mechanism for more digital therapeutics, but also
Speaker 5: for digital diagnostic tools is going to lead to a
Speaker 5: much more cost effective healthcare society, no matter what kind
Speaker 5: of insurance type or plan that we have. So on
Speaker 5: the accessibility side, those tools are really meaningful to the
Speaker 5: future of healthcare. I would also say that technology creates
Speaker 5: a more democratized health care environment. A lot of our
Speaker 5: patients live four hours from a type of specialist that
Speaker 5: they need four hours, you know, a lot of them
Speaker 5: are at least an hour an hour and a half
Speaker 5: from a major lab. So leveraging these types of tools
Speaker 5: gets them the answers that they need faster, which will
Speaker 5: lead to better intervention earlier. And that's where we come
Speaker 5: down to healthy mamas, healthy babies, make happy families.
Speaker 2: Awesome.
Speaker 4: That's a great way to end. Thank you allis so
Speaker 4: much for being with us on smart Talks today. It
Speaker 4: is such great work that you were doing to help
Speaker 4: women in families. So thank you for all your work
Speaker 4: and thanks for our chat today.
Speaker 6: Thank you Laurie.
Speaker 5: It's such an honor to get to be on Smart
Speaker 5: Talks and it was a delightful conversation.
Speaker 3: That about wraps up today's episode. I want to send
Speaker 3: a huge thank you to Laurie and Alice for deepening
Speaker 3: the way I think about AI's expanding role in the
Speaker 3: future of healthcare. It was illuminating to hear a first
Speaker 3: hand account of how providers are already integrating the power
Speaker 3: of transparent, human centric generative AI through Watson X. It's
Speaker 3: enabling telehealth platforms to multiply their impact and is quickly
Speaker 3: becoming essential to offering comprehensive care to patients. As our
Speaker 3: conversation with Laurie and Alice showed, accessibility has long been
Speaker 3: an issue facing patients, particularly in the fertility space. With
Speaker 3: the help of technology from IBM, overumhealth is meaningfully expanding
Speaker 3: its reach to women who previously may not have been
Speaker 3: able to access personalized fertility care. Steps like these are
Speaker 3: helping to usher in a new age in healthcare, one
Speaker 3: that holds incredible potential for both patients and providers. Yet,
Speaker 3: as new technology is implemented, it needs to be done
Speaker 3: with responsibility and care. Using emerging technologies in sensitive feels
Speaker 3: like fertility has the power to transform how people receive care, But,
Speaker 3: as Alice emphasized, only if patient needs are central to
Speaker 3: how we implement solutions. Ovum Health already has over sixty
Speaker 3: seven thousand users. Just think of all the pregnancies that
Speaker 3: have been supported by the platform, and as we just heard,
Speaker 3: this is only the beginning. It's exciting to see how
Speaker 3: this new technology will continue to reach people in need.
Speaker 3: Smart Talks with IBM is produced by Matt Romano, Joey
Speaker 3: fish Ground and Jacob Goldstein. We're edited by Lydia Jane Kott.
Speaker 3: Our engineers are Jason Gambrel, Sarah Bruguier, and Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 3: Theme song by Gramoscope. Special thanks to Andy Kelly, Kathy
Speaker 3: Callahan and the eight Bar and IBM teams, as well
Speaker 3: as the Pushkin marketing team. Smart Talks with IBM is
Speaker 3: a production of Pushkin Industries and Ruby Studio at iHeartMedia.
Speaker 3: To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Malcolm
Speaker 3: Glad