The results are in…and they are incredible.
Steven Charlap, MD, MBA
To save the lives of millions of people I will never meet!
Every digital health entrepreneur pursues his or her product to help patients or have a major impact on health care workflows. Unfortunately, most ultimately fail for a myriad of reasons, which I’ve previously described, including the most challenging, the application simply doesn’t live up to the hype. Therefore, for many, success is a hope and a prayer. The problem is no one can know for certain if their application does what it was built to do until it’s tested with real patients in an actual clinical setting. That takes time, money, and expertise to execute. Many brave the elements; few survive. Trust me, I know it's depressing, but it's true.
SOAP Health is no different. We claim development of something amazing and evolutionary: the world's first, clinical-grade, digital human, conversational AI-powered medical intake and assessment application.
Over the past couple of years. I’ve been espousing the virtues of digital humans as better than human interviewers. My assertions were based on studies that showed that people are more truthful, disclosing, patient, and comfortable sharing personal information with a digital human than a human. The academic basis I relied upon was a ton of research that demonstrated that digital humans don’t invoke the need for users to manage their reputations or make good impressions. Studies showed that users have no fear of being victims of bias or being adversely judged. Even an MRI study showed a completely different pattern of brain activity between human-human and human-digital interaction. In our platform, to improve engagement, users are also given an opportunity to reflect on responses and to correct answers.
But as we all know, academic studies don’t always translate well in the real world. So it was put up or shut-up.
That is why I am so excited to share the results of a recently completed 100+ patient study performed in a live clinical setting with actual patients. In plain speak, the results exceeded our expectations. Here’s what we found.
Let’s start with user experience. We had 95% completion rates and 90% satisfaction rates.
For data collection, Genie, our digital human collected twice as much information as the doctors and nurses at the clinic. Yes, 2X more data collected in less time.
But here’s the kicker. She collected 44% more actionable information. What’s that mean? Patients shared with Genie information about family cancer, family type 2 diabetes, depression, anxiety, major weight gain, and sexual abuse that they simply did not disclose to their doctors and nurses. This data completely altered how the doctors treated them. For example, in one case, instead of referral to a neurologist, the patient was referred to a therapist. Better data led to better clinical action. A win-win-win for patient-provider-payer.
Our digital human and platform clearly demonstrated that patients are not only comfortable interacting with a digital human, but are far more willing to disclose important personal clinical data that affects the care they receive.
But there was more good data. The study also showed a 66% reduction in nurses time collecting and charting patient data. Yes, a two-thirds time savings. So not only did we improve patient care, but we saved the care team over two hours per day. Unfortunately, we did not measure the time impact on the physicians. That will happen in our next study. Nevertheless, the pilot has clinically validated why we call Genie The Perfect Medical Interviewer? and why her risk assessments under the guise of RiskVue? are bar none. Finally, compiling all the data in a Smart SOAP Note? is why so much time was saved for nurses. Want to learn more? Write Spencer Martin at [email protected].