Healthcare and AI News Featuring Authenticx in 2024

Read healthcare, technology, and AI news and insights from Authenticx leaders.

Healthcare IT Today | Utilizing Digital Tools for Administrative Processeses, Member Experience, and Preventive Care

Authenticx Founder & CEO Amy Brown recently shared insights with Healthcare IT Today about the role of innovation in healthcare and how digital tools, like conversation AI, address the member experience.

These tools are moving trends found in data upstream to help improve the member experience by meeting business objectives (retention, ratings, revenue) with health outcomes. Digital innovation helps bring high-quality service and real-time solutions that address coverage, treatment, and communication on plan changes. When adopted, real change can happen with leaders informed on larger organizational issues that are causing friction and find solutions to reduce member churn and identify areas of opportunity for improving agent performance.

One example of a digital solution is leveraging conversation AI. To reduce administrative burden and build experiences that meet member needs, payer organizations are using conversational AI to listen to and draw insights from authentic customer conversations. Listening at scale with AI and ML technology enables organizations to uncover friction points, areas of member confusion and barriers to the ideal customer experience by monitoring critical metrics like call length, repeat callers, customer sentiment and more. After analyzing conversations for negative perceptions and experiences, organizations can access the insights necessary to resolve pain points inside the member experience.

HIT Consultant | Is the Business of Healthcare Out of Control? Optimize Time and Reduce Administrative Burden with AI

Authenticx Founder & CEO Amy Brown recently shared insights with HIT Consultant about how optimizing time for healthcare professionals in health systems by using innovation to reduce the burden of administrative tasks to focus more on the patient experience.

Juggling the administrative business of a complex healthcare system with administering patient care is an undeniable challenge. Healthcare professionals, such as nurses, feel that daily in their roles. The juggling act is increasingly driving reports of burnout and opening discussions around how administrative tasks and expectations have changed within our healthcare system.    

Coming out of the 2020 pandemic, there were high levels of reported burnout across healthcare professionals (as reported by a 2022 USA Today and Ipsos poll). At the time, about half of healthcare workers who responded to the poll reported feeling “burned out,” and nearly a quarter reported that they were likely to leave the healthcare field entirely in the near future. 

More recently, the increased need to provide additional documentation, respond to patient communication, and coordinate with pharmacies and insurance providers has impacted the daily duties of nurses and other healthcare practitioners. Specifically, there’s decreased time for providing clinical patient care when growing administrative needs demand time and attention.   

“The American healthcare industry was created from a core desire to care for the health and well-being of people. While the size and scope of that mission has grown and evolved, that core purpose remains the same as new challenges emerge on how to best prioritize health outcomes and care.”

Amy Brown, Founder & CEO | Authenticx

Pharmaceutical Executive | Driving Value from Healthcare Customer Conversations

Authenticx CTO Michael Armstrong interviewed (Q&A style) with Pharmaceutical Executive on the topics of AI innovation, AI bias prevention, and how to leverage the human element into AI strategy.

Michael Armstrong is CTO and co-founder at Authenticx, a company focused on building and training AI models for pharmacovigilance. He recently spoke with Pharmaceutical Executive about the complicated processes that go into building these programs to promote reliability, trust, and accountability.

“We use a lot of AI for that, but we also believe in keeping humans in the loop. That’s critical…We view AI as a tool to make life better, and not something that should replace humans.”

Mchael Armstrong, CTO | Authenticx

Pharmaphorum | Address the Impact of Trending Health Information with Conversation Data

Authenticx Founder & CEO Amy Brown recently shared insights with Pharmaphorum about the rise in health misinformation and how to combat it.

When health solutions become suddenly and overwhelmingly popular, there is increased demand on communication channels that impact customer experience and solution access. Misinformation often accompanies these trending topics – for instance, as occurred with the recent explosion of Ozempic – and this can cause customer confusion and frustration.

These situations also further complicate the complex healthcare landscape for customers, leading to repetitive interactions with service agents – a cycle known as the Eddy Effect. Increased interactions slow the customer journey and put additional strain on organisational resources.

Healthcare organisations need to provide clarity amidst the online noise to combat the effects of misinformation. By analysing conversational data from various touchpoints, leaders can identify emerging trends early and craft targeted communication to address potential confusion before it escalates. Targeted education efforts, informed by conversational data insights, can directly reduce call centre volumes, mitigate customer frustration, and guide consumers towards reliable sources of information.

“As consumers turn to social media, online forums, and other online platforms for information and insight into treatment experiences, the potential for misleading content and viral trends will persist. Identifying and responding to these trends will be invaluable to the customer experience.”

Amy Brown, Founder & CEO | Authenticx

Healthcare IT Today | Challenges, Ethical Concerns, and Pessimistic Views with AI Integration

Authenticx Founder & CEO Amy Brown recently shared insights with Healthcare IT Today about the challenges, concerns, and outlook of AI in healthcare.

Healthcare workers face the challenge of balancing exceptional patient care against completing necessary administrative functions. Nurses, in particular, often field a variety of patient calls that range from scheduling appointments to answering medical questions.

Conversational data insights help healthcare organizations redirect administrative burdens and ensure that medical professionals’ time and expertise are being used in the most impactful ways. Leaders can use AI to listen to and analyze patient conversations, understand top reasons for patient calls and identify common areas of disruption. With those insights, they can develop or update processes to redirect administrative calls, prioritize nurses’ ability to provide patient care and improve operational efficiency.

CX Magazine | Evolving the Ways Leaders Listen to Customer Feedback

Authenticx Chief Evangelist Leslie Pagel recently shared insights with CX Magazine about moving past surveys, understanding survey fatigue, and learning how to listen to the voice of the patient through conversational intelligence.

With a whopping 16 billion marketing dollars devoted to customer surveys, the thought of answering more questions exhausts customers. Take a minute to open your inbox right now. A guess? There is at least one survey request from a brand with which you have recently interacted. It can feel never-ending and exhausting. And it’s not just consumers who are fatigued — leaders are, too, according to McKinsey. 

Moving past the surveys

In an effort to provide convenience and ease of use, surveys arose as a digital solution to drive a method of collecting feedback. However, problems continue to emerge in how feedback is gathered, with surveys commonly designed based on what the brand wants to learn in order to drive positive outcomes and meet internal KPIs. For example, consider NPS which asks the customer, “what will you do for me?” On top of that, despite the data gathered, leaders grow frustrated when their desired outcomes remain unmet. 

“Our customers interact with us every day, and they expect us to listen in on these moments. With advancements in AI and natural language processing, CX leaders can realise the importance and value of the unsolicited customer voice.”

Leslie Pagel, Chief Evangelist | Authenticx

CMS Wire | Designing Customer Surveys Without Causing Customer Fatigue

Authenticx Chief Evangelist Leslie Pagel recently shared insights with CMS Wire about understanding survey fatigue and learning how to listen to the voice of the patient.

Leslie Pagel, Chief Evangelist officer at Authenticx, a conversational intelligence platform provider for the healthcare industry, told CMSWire that customers are generally indifferent to surveys, and often feel overwhelmed by the frequent survey requests not only from one company but from the myriad of companies they engage with.

“And, what’s worse, business leaders are frustrated by our surveys too,” said Pagel. “For decades the customer experience (CX) industry has tried to address this frustration by evolving the survey technology, but these innovations in customer listening aren’t fixing the heart of the problem,” Pagel suggested that customers still feel like their voice isn’t heard — and yet business leaders continue to wonder why consumer trust is so low.

Healthcare Business Today | Strategies To Optimize Time And Reduce Healthcare Burnout With AI

Authenticx Founder & CEO Amy Brown contributed an article to Healthcare Business Today on the topic of navigating healthcare burnout and using AI to optimize employee time and alleviate administrative strain.

The complexity of the U.S. healthcare system continues to have a rippling impact on patients and healthcare professionals. Coming out of the 2020 pandemic, there were high levels of reported burnout (as reported by a 2022 USA Today and Ipsos poll). At the time, about half of healthcare workers who responded to the poll reported feeling “burned out” and nearly a quarter reported that they were likely to leave the healthcare field entirely in the near future.  

And concerns of widespread burnout have only continued to grow in healthcare. 

More recently, as the adoption of online patient portals has become standard, there has been news on the increasing administrative burden on healthcare employees and staff, contributing to increased feelings of burnout.  

“Many healthcare leaders are looking at the big picture or for a silver bullet. Often, they can miss what’s directly impacting their people on the front lines.”

Amy Brown, Founder & CEO | Authenticx

Pharma Exec | Identifying Healthcare Trends from Conversation Data

Authenticx Founder & CEO Amy Brown contributed an article to Pharma Exec on the topic of trend identification in conversation data with strategies for leaders to use to inform their CX and data analysis.

The recent explosion of weight loss drugs like Ozempic, fueled by online hype, has brought both opportunities and challenges to the healthcare customer experience. While demand surges, so does the potential for misinformed consumers.

Education is crucial to ensure a positive customer experience amidst this frenzy. We need to find ways to “set the record straight” about misinformation circulating online. Customers who encounter inaccurate information may attempt to access services they’re not eligible for or seek medicines for inappropriate uses. This can lead to confusion, frustration and repeated interactions with customer service as they try to navigate the situation–a cycle that perfectly embodies the repetitive nature of The Eddy Effect™, or instances of consumers getting ‘stuck’ in the customer journey, which results in a negative customer experience.

This article will discuss how analyzing the changing voices of customer populations not only provides valuable insights but also identifies possible emerging trends.

“By embracing a data-driven approach and leveraging conversational AI insights, healthcare organizations can confidently navigate fads to provide education and exceptional care delivery while maintaining operational efficiency.”

Amy Brown, Founder & CEO | Authenticx

Healthcare Business Today | Navigating Trending Healthcare Topics With Conversational Intelligence

Authenticx Founder & CEO Amy Brown contributed an article to Healthcare Business Today on the topic of navigating and identifying topic trends and strategies for leaders to use conversation data to inform their CX to turn insights into action.

Expanding demand for popular weight loss drugs like Ozempic has placed a uniquely modern strain on the healthcare customer experience. With the widespread online popularity of this and other medications, more customers than ever before risk running into misinformation.

Healthcare practitioners seeking to ensure a positive healthcare customer journey amidst the craze must identify ways to counteract the inaccuracies widely shared online.

Customers may attempt to access services they’re ineligible for or obtain medications for unintended uses when they encounter healthcare misinformation. Unfortunately, repetitive interactions with customer service representatives can often perpetuate misinformation by ushering customers into a confusing cycle of frustration known as The Eddy Effect™. This term describes instances where consumers get ‘stuck’ in their journeys, resulting in a negative customer experience.

Healthcare leaders have a duty to protect customers from damaging misinformation and the Eddy Effect whenever possible. Luckily, the voice of the customer provides critical insight into identifying emerging trends that may result in misinformation.

“The ability to detect and proactively respond to trends is invaluable as the amount of online health information and misleading content available to the public grows.”

Amy Brown, Founder & CEO | Authenticx

World Pharma Today | Driving Value from Healthcare Customer Conversations

Authenticx Founder & CEO Amy Brown interviewed with World Pharma Today on the topics of healthcare innovation, generative AI and LLMs, patient privacy, and the future of Authenticx in the industry.

In an exclusive Q&A session with Amy Brown, the founder and CEO of Authenticx, we delve into the innovative approach of leveraging generative AI to unlock valuable insights from healthcare customer conversations. Amy shares insights into the inspiration behind Authenticx’s AI solution, its impact on the pharmaceutical industry, and the challenges faced by healthcare organizations in analyzing vast volumes of conversational data. Additionally, she discusses the platform’s role in improving patient experiences, ensuring data security, and the future advancements envisioned in healthcare customer experience data analysis.

“Thinking of AI as a means to identify signals of disruption or opportunity can enormously impact healthcare business strategy. AI helps enhance listening so that your team can focus on taking action.”

Amy Brown, Founder & CEO | Authenticx

Fortune | The Best Investment Opportunities in AI for Healthcare

Authenticx Founder & CEO Amy Brown recently shared insights with John Kell in Fortune about AI in healthcare and investment in AI through VC funding.

Amy Brown, founder and CEO of Authenticx, says her past experience in social work and state government exposed her to huge sets of unstructured data from the conversations that health insurance companies record with their customers.

“I saw a huge opportunity to listen at scale, using AI, and applying AI to a kind of archaic data source that has been sitting on a shelf for decades,” says Brown.

Healthcare IT Today | What Health IT Trend Has You Most Excited?

Authenticx Chief Product Officer Eric Prugh contributed commentary in Healthcare IT Today on the topic of AI innovation and health IT trends.

“AI’s visual capabilities keep growing and adapting over time. We’re enabling more modalities for interacting with AI, and we’ll see further expansion of what we know is possible. We’re getting closer to being able to throw anything at AI and derive value from it, which is a pretty exciting future. Imagine inputting a variety of different data formats like images, spreadsheets, and text — then getting a synthesized set of insights back in a readable, digestible format.”

Dataversity | How AI Tools Like Conversational Intelligence Improve Healthcare Customer Journeys

Authenticx Founder & CEO Amy Brown contributed an article in Dataversity on the topic of using conversational intelligence AI and machine learning) to listen to customers’ frustrations in their care journey and how to implement AI successfully in organizations.

According to a recent report, a continuous loop of disruptions impacts 20% of customer interactions in healthcare, with nearly half of these disruptions delaying or preventing patient care. However, organizations using conversational intelligence to listen to and analyze the voice of the customer (VOC) are realizing benefits, citing a 25% increase in first-call resolution rates and a 10% decrease in customer churn.

Conversational intelligence – and listening-focused AI – have the potential to significantly improve customer interactions and the delivery of timely responses to common questions by helping leaders identify systemic issues and provide more seamless, frustration-free experiences.

Modern Healthcare | How AI-enabled speech analysis could diagnose, treat diseases

Authenticx was mentioned in an article in Modern Healthcare on the topic of the benefits of AI speech analysis in healthcare and how it provides patient access insights.

“We began to identify some of the barriers that exist for patients. There was a trend we started to notice around transportation, especially around patients who needed to reschedule an appointment.”

Healthcare IT Today | Balancing Innovation and Digital Transformation with Regulatory Compliance and Patient Safety

Authenticx Chief Technology Officer Michael Armstrong contributed commentary in Healthcare IT Today on the topic of Health IT innovation’s role in patient security and compliance.

Establishing a culture of transparency is an important way to balance the need for compliance protocols with space to play and innovate. When it comes to Health IT, data security and privacy is a non-negotiable. Everything we design and build is encrypted and secure. With so much data being created and processed, transparency is critical in understanding protocols in place and access controls for team alignment and data security. Transparency also drives innovation.

Probably the most important aspect of fostering a culture of innovation is the understanding of risk. It isn’t good enough to just identify that risk exists but to understand the magnitude and potential impact. Not all risk is created equal. Understanding the nuance can allow a team to feel comfortable trying new things.

CX Magazine | 4 practical approaches to unlocking customer voice and uncovering deeper insights 

Authenticx Chief Evangelist Leslie Pagel contributed an article in CX Magazine on the topic of unlocking the voice of the customer in 2024.

Daily human conversations, whether spoken, written or recorded, represent an invaluable source of organic data for businesses. These word exchanges have significant potential to provide contextual insights that influence elements of an organisation’s operations.

Unstructured conversations provide meaningful context around customer concerns, preferences and priorities. Historically, this data has been difficult to mine, but advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) now enable a comprehensive, large-scale analysis of conversations. AI analyses unstructured data on a much greater scale than humans are capable of to help us comprehend the discussion’s content more deeply. A more granular understanding enables leaders to make more informed decisions, generating better outcomes for businesses and customers.

Organisations are deep into 2024 planning, strategising how to meet customer expectations next year and beyond.Here’s how companies can start capitalising on customer conversations to pave the way for sharper customer focus and a better CX.

HIT Consultant | Unlocking Patient Insights with Conversational AI in Healthcare

Authenticx Chief Product Officer Eric Prugh contributed an article in HIT Consultant on the topic of leveraging conversational AI to unlock patient insights.

Healthcare leaders should champion human-AI collaboration by having people work with AI to validate insights and develop engagement strategies. Organizations can — and should — implement conversational AI because it allows leaders to identify actionable areas of change and protects individuals’ privacy and identities. 

Yet while these organizations recognize the merit of sharing these conversations enterprise-wide, many worry that doing so will compromise data privacy and compliance. But developments in conversational artificial intelligence (AI) can safely bring the voice of the customer to the forefront.

insideBIGDATA | Heard on the Street – Hearing the Voice of the Customer

Authenticx Chief Product Officer Eric Prugh contributed commentary in insideBIGDATA’s round-up on the topic of hearing the voice of the customer with AI.

There’s a myth that only executive leaders benefit from the information gathered from the voice of the customer (VoC). However, every team within a company can use these insights to improve their individual departments when creating empathy behind important problems that need to be prioritized. We are making significant investments into the foundation of our AI that will help us train new AI models to pull meaningful insights from unstructured conversations.  
 
An example of this in practice is AI that can take a conversation transcript and automatically determine the 3-4 main discussion topics of the call using Generative AI. With no setup at all, leaders can more easily surface problem areas using AI, correlate those to what customers are saying in the contact center, and take action to help improve both business outcomes and the customer experience.

Think of AI as a scalable listening engine, gathering and making sense of customer signals and perspectives to generate insights for decision-makers to create targeted improvements to CX.  This approach makes it easier for everyone companywide to align around addressing customer needs and improving experiences rather than relying purely on anecdotal evidence or a minimal interaction sample size.

Healthcare IT Today | 2024 Health IT Predictions

Authenticx Chief Evangelist Leslie Pagel contributed commentary in Healthcare IT Today on the topic of using AI to process unstructured, conversational data to better listen to the voice of the customer.

AI tools, such as ChatGPT and generative AI, are contributing to speed, volume, and accuracy in processing unstructured data sources. The organizations investing in these resources will be rewarded with a competitive advantage as they will be able to respond at the speed of change – meeting customer needs in the moment. The ability to quickly process a high volume of conversational data – representing the authentic voice of the customer – allows teams to have a clear line of sight into the changing customer landscape, and gives business leaders the confidence they need to strategically pivot to meet customer and business expectations.

Inc. | Building the Future of Community: Enabling Founders Through Indiana’s People-First Approach

Authenticx Founder & CEO Amy Brown was featured as a local founder by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) in Inc. on the topic of how state and local government can help attract new businesses and help them thrive through policy, connections, and culture.

Founders are often so busy with the nuts and bolts of launching and operating their new businesses that they may overlook one of the most important factors in its success: location. While many may not look beyond their home state as their company headquarters, factors like low cost of living, investment in infrastructure and business resources, and government and community support for new businesses can all affect a company’s long-term viability and profitability. These are areas for which Indiana is known, and its business-friendly climate is attracting founders in droves. 

At a recent Inc. 5000 panel in partnership with Indiana for the Bold, the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC), and Fast Company Vice President and Executive Editor Ben Baer sought to find out why the Hoosier State draws so many entrepreneurs. Baer spoke with Salena Scardina, executive vice president, external engagement at Indiana Economic Development Corporation, which helps businesses locate, grow, and thrive in Indiana, as well as Indiana-based founders, Wade Breitzke, CEO of advertising marketing firm WeCreate; and Amy Brown, CEO of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered health care customer service company Authenticx, about what community means to the health of a company and why Indiana is a common theme in many business success stories.

Healthcare IT Today | 2024 Health IT Predictions

Authenticx Founder & CEO Amy Brown contributed commentary in Healthcare IT Today on the topic of using AI to listen at scale to the actual voice of the customer, not take the human out of healthcare.

Humans spend their day communicating with each other, with those words exchanged in conversation — via text or recorded voice — falling into the category of unstructured data. This data will continue offering robust, contextual insights that can impact all functional areas of an organization. AI can help analyze unstructured data at scale, to understand what people talk about. Understanding leads to better decisions; better decisions lead to better outcomes for both business and customers. Smart companies will approach AI with a great deal of intentionality and responsibility, recognizing the opportunity is not just in replacing human effort, but also in understanding the impacts of listening.

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About Authenticx

Authenticx was founded to analyze and activate customer interaction data at scale. Why? We wanted to reveal transformational opportunities in healthcare. We are on a mission to help humans understand humans. With a combined 100+ years of leadership experience in pharma, payer, and healthcare organizations, we know first-hand the challenges and opportunities that our clients face because we’ve been in your shoes.

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