Enhancing Patient Experiences with Empathetic, Animated, AI-Powered Avatars

Healthcare in the US is full of deep-rooted inequality and systemic flaws. How do we improve the system as it falls further into chaos and people are leaving the profession. Today we are going to talk with a company working to solve these problems

Hey everybody, this is Chris Brandt, here welcome to another FUTR podcast.

Today I am joined by Chuck Rinker, CEO of PRSONAS which is working on creating a digital workforce with their personality engine that speaks any language has all the information you may need, all while doing it with empathy and emotion.

So let's talk with Chuck about what he is seeing, and how it all works,

Welcome Chuck

https://www.prsonas.com/
https://ihealthassist.prsonas.com/


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Transcript

Chris Brandt: 0:00

Thanks so much for having Chuck on your podcast. He hasn't stopped talking about how appreciative he is that he was able to share his insights with your viewers. But don't tell him I told you that. Hey, everybody, this is Chris Pratt here with another podcast future podcast. Healthcare in the U. S. is full of deep rooted inequality and systemic flaws. How do we improve the system as it falls further into chaos and people are leaving the profession? Today I'm joined by Chuck Rinker, CEO of Personas, which is working on creating a digital workforce with their personality engine that speaks any language, has all the information you may need, all while doing it with empathy and emotion. So let's talk with Chuck about what he is seeing and how it all works. Welcome Chuck.

Chuck Rinker: 0:50

Thanks, Chris. We really appreciate you having me looking forward to this conversation.

Chris Brandt: 0:53

Me too. Cause I think you guys have done something really kind of interesting. And you know, since we last talked, um, You know, my, my father has gone into an assisted living facility and things like that, and there's been a lot of time navigating hospitals and, and, and those sorts of things. So I'm, I'm starting to appreciate, uh, in greater detail, the need for something like what you guys have built. Um, so could you, just to get started, could you talk about like your journey and the philosophy behind personas?

Chuck Rinker: 1:23

very much. It kind of can wrap up pretty simply. Um, I spent an early part of my career in military simulation, a lot of simulation work. Got into game development. And in game development, the whole name of the commercial game for game developers is how do you, how do you get and keep people engaged with your gaming? How do you interact with humans? How do you get them, uh, I hate to use the word in the medical side of it, how do you get them addicted to the gameplay you're providing? And after going through some health journeys of our own, um, my wife and I and, um, Spending about, uh, 10 or 15 years in that space, I, um, decided that there was probably a better use case for, for, uh, that human engagement component. And so we really started applying it to the retail sector and really said, okay, well, if we can get kids addicted to games, how do we, um, how do we take that engagement component and engage it in more of a retail setting? That eventually led into this, what we call personas with a purpose, which is, wait a second, let's do something a little bit better. Let's, let's, let's help patients and people who have a hard time navigating and communicating with all the breadth of. technology and all that's available in the healthcare sector. How do you break down that communication barrier and really engage patients at a, at a personal level?

Chris Brandt: 2:36

Let's talk about what personas is like when somebody, um, you know, interacts with personas and engages, um, It's one of these, you know, personalized sort of assisted, you know, uh, I don't know, maybe Staffog, we can call them. Um, but can you kind of just run through it? Cause it's an interesting concept.

Chuck Rinker: 2:59

Yeah. At the core level, it sounds a little tongue in cheek, but it's true. We're really just replacing the keyboard and mouse. Um, um, if you remember the old Star Trek analogy and you saw Scotty getting up to the computer and he would talk to the computer and he was kind of making fun of our archaic mouse and I'd go, computer, you know, I need this help.

Chris Brandt: 3:16

And it's really going,

Chuck Rinker: 3:18

we've built so much time, exactly. You got it. You've seen it. Um, we've spent so much time creating all these amazing and wonderful technologies that can help patient, help outcomes, help, help, um, pretty much bring information to the forefront, but we haven't spent enough time focusing. On what that means from a human. You and I have evolved over, well the human race has evolved over a long period of time. Um, learning, uh, how to communicate. I feel

Chris Brandt: 3:45

like I am still evolving a little bit.

Chuck Rinker: 3:48

That's true. I think we all need a little evolution every once in a while. But we spent so much time learning how to talk.

Chris Brandt: 3:53

My wife tells me that repeatedly.

Chuck Rinker: 3:56

That's right. So, see, the banter we're having right now is a prime example. There's a certain amount of, uh, camaraderie, a certain amount of, uh, emotional connection, bonding. You're laughing, I'm smiling. There's more to communication than just what you read on the page. Um, so it's really beyond the series and the Alexis of the conversational, which is, okay, I'm going to speak something and then I can tell the computer what you said. That's a real minimal part of it. What we talk about is that, that we would call human communication that involves everything around the brand intimacy. Um, what is, what, what do people want to be? How do they want to be spoken to? What is that personality? If you could take your brand or your healthcare journey, you're a patient, you're a, um, um, healthcare brand. And you say, if I had encompassed my entire brand of what I want to be to that patient. What would he or she, or they look like, what would knowledge base would they have in their brain, how would they interact and engage with those patients. And so you look at it, and you kind of basically try to wrap up if I had no access to keyboards, mice or anything, and I could build that perfect. Human that perfect health care that hurt perfect patient advocate. We'll use that term. That person perfect patient advocate. What would that be for you? And then we try to wrap that in. Now, we're pretty early in the world evolution, you know, Jenny eyes on everybody's tip of everybody's tongue and I. T. Departments are scrambling to figure out how to make it work, but at the end of the day, we're not trying to, uh, change the world overnight. We're really trying to take on those early use cases. You mentioned your family members and assisted facilities, and we focus on hospitals and environments. We go, you know, let's not, we can't be all things to all people, but let's solve those simple things. Patient shows up at a hospital, they walk in the door, they're greeted by this friendly Pixar looking avatar, not a human, and we'll get to that in a minute. Remind me to speak about the Uncanny Valley for a second.

Chris Brandt: 6:01

Yeah, for sure. Because I think that's interesting, yeah.

Chuck Rinker: 6:04

It's very interesting because we really kind of say we're not human replication, we're human communication. We're not trying to replace humans, we're trying to communicate with humans. That's a big differentiate between us and some of the other competitors. Or people scrambling to the market. So in any sense, you walk in, what do you want when you walk into hospital? 70 percent of patients are looking to find out where they need to go. And right now there's a huge burden on the healthcare staff. We all know about labor shortages, inconsistent nurses, patient experience, team members have long, frustrating days. Sometimes they're a little more short with their patients than they should be. Sometimes they're the most accommodating people in the world and they're all trying their best, but everybody has their limits. This thing that we create, this personality, greets you consistently. We only divulge the information that the patient experience teams ask us to divulge. We really kind of pre can what that user experience is going to be and how we can best serve that patient. Infinite patients, 24 7, they're there. So you walk in, it says, Hey, welcome to this hospital. How can I help you today, Chris? Well, you know what? I just look for a cup of coffee while I'm waiting for my daughter to get over. Oh, you want a cup of coffee? The coffee shop is down the hall to the left. You could ask me how much is parking? Well, you know, parking is going to be 20 a day. You can get it validated here. Oh, I got to stay overnight. My kid was just admitted. Are there any local hospital, I mean, local hotels I could stay at? Oh yeah. You know what? There's a. Uh, um, you know, uh, Hilton right around the corner. So it's really about offering that without burdening the staff. So that's the experience you would get.

Chris Brandt: 7:37

Yeah. And it's really cool because like what you're, I mean, you're one, you're talking about like, you know, finding people to work in healthcare is just brutal right now. I know that it's just, it's, it's a hard thing. So like you have that stack to staff augmentation piece, which is really interesting. Um, But I think the other, some of the other things that, you know, are looped into that is like, you literally have a person you're talking to with kind of complete knowledge of everything going on in that facility potentially, right? You know, which is much more than you get with somebody who's a part time worker who shows up, you know, a couple of days a week to, to greet people, right? Um, but beyond that, I think the thing that's really interesting is that you have You provide this resource that becomes a patient advocate and, and beyond that, it, it, it doesn't. You know, discriminate. It doesn't, you know, like from a DEIA perspective, it's, you know, not going to have those, you know, unfortunate interactions that, that people can have. Right.

Chuck Rinker: 8:37

That's absolutely true. All this information is vetted and I do have to be very clear with people because, um. There's a big, I wouldn't say fear, it's founded, uh, security, privacy, um, uh, AI in general. When you leave up to a true generative AI piece, you can create what we call hallucinations, is what they call, call them, but it's basically you're letting the computer create The final response, and that's at this point in the evolution of generational AI, um, generative AI. I think that's a little premature. We're betting too much on that horse. So what we do is work directly with the patient experience team, and we'll use generative AI to create some of the responses to accelerate our production to answer some of the simple pieces of the puzzle. But at the end of the day, all that information we do highly, highly recommend. Just from a sure, um, uh, pure, um, you know, doing the right thing, you know, let's, let's make sure we're using this correctly and make sure that we're getting all the compliance and regulatory needs we need. We do vet this, this information. So to your point, even though we're populating that, um, let's call it the brain of, um, of our, our Daphne has everybody kind of gives their own name, like Princess Alexandra hospital cause there's Alex. Um, so in any sense, we, we, we populate that knowledge base on all the information they know about the hospital, you know, where the, where's the locations, where the ward, what facilities are around, what geographical location they're in, some of their logistical pieces. So you do train that and all that ultimately is pre vetted through the patient experience team. So what it gives us is a vetted informational data source for the brain of Daphne. But to your point, it does, um, pretty much eliminate recurrent training. And makes it incredibly easy for onboarding as well. As a matter of fact, a lot of the staff members will play with and talk to the avatar itself. And that's kind of in a form of its own training itself. You know, the avatar has already been provided that knowledge base. So, so they can kind of talk and engage with and give us their feedback as well. It also allows you to say, okay, you know what, we've had a change and, and we're not even talking hospitals only. And, you know, we've done a lot in the clinical trial world. Um, and I wanted to address that because in health care overall, even in the hospital environment, trust is key. And so when information changes, they have to trust that that information is correct. And they have to trust that the information they're giving out is, is utilized in the capacity it's, it's done. And one of the interesting, uh, studies that we draw upon was a study done, um, where patients are disseminating, uh, sensitive medical information to their doctor. Um, so let's just, you can see me on YouTube. I'm the old 57 year old white guy. Let's, let's be honest about it. I'm the quintessential, uh, um, um, gray haired middle aged white man, but you know, people that might be of a minority. Yeah, exactly. Of a more, um, underserved community or minority community, maybe a young teenager, they don't necessarily trust me like they should or would for valid reasons. So, what we found in the study is that, um, the information that you actually deliver, To an avatar who you get to pick, you know, what do you want that avatar to look like? Oh, I want it to look like a 27 year old Hispanic female. Females overall have a better trust factor than males. I hate to say that. The studies show that. And that's surprised. So we find that the information is coming from the patients into this database now. Yeah, there's a lot of things that are kind of on that fence of, You know, is it politically correct or not? But we go by outcomes. I'm just giving you real data here. Um, so the point is, is that the information that you're now getting from the patient, they now trust this avatar. They trust that this avatar is doing the right thing with my data and gathering the right data more than they do humans. Which is another reason why I kind of jokingly wonder why my competitors are so hell bent. Can I say hell on this podcast if I didn't? You can scratch that one out.

Chris Brandt: 12:38

Absolutely can. You can go even worse if you want.

Chuck Rinker: 12:43

But they're so hell bent on creating it look like a human. Let's make it act like a human. Let's make it look like a human. And all, and I kind of go, wait a second. If you don't trust a human, They sure aren't going to trust a fake human. Um, so that's where we get into that uncanny, uh, conversation and there's studies that show this too, it's pretty clear, the more human like it gets, unless it really is a human, you get that uncanny valley, which I can, for the layman term, it's basically the creepy factor. You know when things happen a little too human, but they're not perfectly human And ironically the the hollywood's been playing on that for decades You got the human body where the wrist turns just a little bit too far their head turns a little past where it should be Or their eyes just aren't quite right things are just close, but they're not there and it just kind of creeps you out

Chris Brandt: 13:32

They have a lot of muscles in their upper lip, which don't exist.

Chuck Rinker: 13:37

And so we've kind of taken the old and I'm, I'm a big, huge Disney fan. And we've kind of taken, you know, what's the most beloved band, what's the most trusted brand, beloved brand, trusted brand in the world. And it's Disney. Why? Because Disney encompasses human characteristics. But in a non human, there's no, nobody looks at a Disney film and goes, Oh, well, that's a real person, but they have real emotion. Right. They cry over, they cry over Disney characters more than they cry over real people. So it creates that emotional connection and that actual trust bond, that empathy, that approachability, that trust. And so we've really, as a, we were formed out of a bunch of game developers. So we've really just embodied that into our digital personality engine is what we've really, Targeted for

Chris Brandt: 14:23

yeah, I I cannot watch disney movies with my kids. It's just too embarrassing at some point I'm not I got something in my

Chuck Rinker: 14:32

eye, you know You're you're you're a case point people people see the disney movies and if they look at the power of disney Versus I don't want to go to the doctor. I don't like talking to doctors I mean, come on, how much more obvious can you be, you know, so

Chris Brandt: 14:45

yeah I would totally rather talk to a disney character than a doctor any day.

Chuck Rinker: 14:49

Absolutely You

Chris Brandt: 14:50

You're solving some big problems in the healthcare space with, with what you're doing. I mean, can you speak, you know, like we talked about, you know, like the DEIA part of it and, and, you know, like, you know, we, and you mentioned, you know, like there, there is a big disparity, you know, between races in terms of medical outcomes. Right. Um, but I mean, like in, in, in like the ways of being like a patient advocate for, for example, like, you know, how, how does You know, like communication work. Is it just because they're more comfortable talking to these people? Or is it because, you know, the, that avatar is sort of categorizing and classifying some of the problems and so, sort of helping, you know, the doctor get to, you know, to the, to the problem faster too, or is it just because it's providing more information?

Chuck Rinker: 15:36

No, that's great. That's a great question. And, um, right now at this point in our career, our journey with personas, we really haven't, um, quite honestly, our support for the HCPs has been a little more tertiary. We're really focusing on a patient. So it's more about patient information. So like for instance, um, long ago back in, uh, Probably 2013 or before, when we first started, we put a couple of animated characters into the Disney Hospital down at Celebration Health, and the kids were greeted by this bear, this animated bear, and this bear would talk to them and tell them what they should experience going through MRIs and CT scans. And the goal there was to get kids more acclimated and comfortable and not be so scared about getting cts With the end outcome being a reduction in sedation rates. I think we reduced sedation rates by about four and a half or five percent Of course, the parents were more comfortable pre op post op stays were reduced. So it wasn't a huge. Oh my god This is you know, the best thing since sliced bread, but it definitely it definitely moved the needle and that's kind of where we're at There um more common recent Um, use cases are really, um, uh, less about that information dissemination. Well, actually, it is about information, but less about the direct patient advocacy on helping that kid through that procedure. This is more. Um, we've been, uh, doing work with. A couple institutions, RTI being probably one of the primary, um, where we're working in the clinical trial space, you talk about improving outcomes and as you know, as well as I do, um, underserved communities, minorities are, are way, way, way underrepresented in clinical trials, um, and the deaf community is pretty much non existent in the clinical trial world. So what we've done is work with RTI, and so when you go into clinical recruitment, so we can get that targeted list, we're trying to target this demographic. So what we do is we'll create characters that would be appealing, that would be more noted by that particular demographic we're targeting. So instead of just blanketing an email to 100, 000 people and hoping that, you know, if you're trying to recruit, let's say 150 participants for your clinical study, You're going to blanket it out there. You're going to try to target it through these algorithms and try to put up your models like most advertisers do, but at the end of the day, what catches your eye is if it's not a cat video on Facebook, maybe we can catch your eye with a fun little animation that appeals to that demographic that says, Hey, Could be a cat. Let's say you got, it could be a cat, that 23-year-old Hispanic female saying, Hey, are you, and, and this is a, a real trial. We just are, but still undergoing the OBO trials for, um, opioid addicted, underserved community, uh, females who have had babies out of we, uh, or out of, um, um, not wedlock, um, out of opioid addicted parents. Um, so what does that do to the baby? So, by appealing and letting the, uh, participant trial, uh, participants choose the character they want to engage with through the recruitment and consent process, We find they're much more at ease and they're much more comfortable So they're now speaking more freely. They're getting the information and that avatar is now walking them through the consent process And getting them to understand and agree to the pros and cons of being a participant in this trial And and that that's kind of what I mean by focusing on the demographics. So we're creating that trust for the underserved community. That doesn't Typically get represented and we have yet knock on wood and i'm waiting for my first so if any of your Listeners are trying to conduct a clinical trial within the deaf community. Let us know because we do have a couple of staff members who are part of the deaf community and we do take pride in our characters with the we've trained our characters to do sign language so we can do American Sign Language and British Sign Language currently. Um, so we're really trying to push that from a full communication inclusivity perspective.

Chris Brandt: 19:33

American Sign Language is a different language. It's not necessarily English. People who speak sign language don't necessarily speak English, right? So it's, it's kind of an interesting thing. But beyond that, I mean, your, your platform speaks how many languages? I mean, because no hospital is staffed with the amount of languages that you can, you know, interact with, right?

Chuck Rinker: 19:55

That is absolutely true. Yeah. Well, we currently have five languages deployed in London. But, but overall, we've, we have access to 150, a little over 150 languages that have been developed in partnership. We've been a Microsoft Gold partner since 2007. I would say in the US, the multilingual typically, to be honest, has been centered around, uh, you know, English and Spanish, but our European deployments have taken far more advantage of the multilingual capabilities in our American trials.

Chris Brandt: 20:26

There's a lot of interesting things here that, that are going on and just in terms of just, um, straight up information, better information, you know, like more comfort level, more trust. Um, I got to imagine, and you kind of mentioned some like interesting use cases you've had, but I got to imagine you've got some really, uh, cool projects that you've worked on and some really interesting use cases. I would love to hear about some of the, you know, cool successes you've had in the market.

Chuck Rinker: 20:54

Yeah, that's, that's an interesting question because we've to date. Um, I can't say we've been the resounding success that, uh, we're a worldwide recognized leader, but, but we have delivered probably a 250 or so of these experiences to this point. Um, but we started back in the retail world as mentioned. So when trade shows existed. A real common use case was being a product specialist, you know, tell me everything you can about uh, Uh the product that i'm supposed to be representing one thing that most people don't realize is we actually Were um during the initial launch and training of the toyota sales staff We were the avatars that we put these holograms at the front of each of the, uh, RAV4s up at a closed regional meeting. And so the sales agent, the sales managers from each region could come up and talk to this character and this character knew everything about the RAV4. So it was really more like sales training, sales enablement were the future of, you know, the, the, the automobile industry. And, you know, you have these little holograms talking about them. Um, you know, everything from how many foot pounds of torque that the wheels can deliver and also that the knowledge that you can program these avatars is, as you know, pretty mind boggling, you know, I think the practical limit right now is somewhere around 36, 000 questions that we can expect to be responded to within, you know, a half, half a second or less. So we're not, we're not Google search engine yet, but, uh, with our Mark Shaw partner. That's a lot of information.

Chris Brandt: 22:20

Well, and I got to imagine as, as sort of the, the large language models evolve and things like that, you know, your ability to integrate some of that, that kind of technology and into the platform will be really interesting.

Chuck Rinker: 22:32

Absolutely. As a matter of fact, it's funny you've said that because that did key on what I consider one of the most intriguing use cases. And when you talk about how many languages we can speak, but as you know, you can train a language to your point about training a large language. So. We did a group, a work with, um, CBHA, which is the Columbia Basin Healthcare Association up, uh, They're between Spokane, Washington, and Seattle up in the Columbia Health Basin. And there's a large population of, um, uh, kind of a migratory, uh, group, um, that speak a language called Mixteca, which is, um, kind of Spanish, but also more of an ancient form. And it's, it's written, but not partially written. And I think the numbers are something odd, like there's less than 200, 000 in the world that speak Mixteca. So there was no language model for Mixteca. And their challenge was. They serve that community, and that community would walk in the door, and of course, they don't have the staff that is native Mixteca speakers, so they would always have difficulty directing, um, The, uh, patients coming to the door on what, where they needed to go, what they needed to do. So we spent a fair amount of time. We modeled a character that that resembled, you know, the cultural differences and like an American Indian appeal to their, their, their facial features and their skin tone and such. So, we built a model that represented a typical. Um, um, member, there's, they're called the community and then we programmed a language model to recognize Mixteca. And so they would come through and be greeted in Mixteca and be able to ask for basic directions and all. So it didn't solve a big problem. Uh, a problem that couldn't take them through the whole health journey, but at least make them, made them feel. So when they walked in the deal to this whole concept of feeling trusted and represented, so they felt welcome, they were greeted in their native language. They felt welcome. They felt represented. And it was, it was a great use case that, you know, you don't have to just stick to the languages, you know, you can, you can train them and you can pretty much, uh, uh, try to build something that, uh, that, that, that olive branch, that culture out outreach to whatever community you want to serve or need to serve.

Chris Brandt: 24:38

Yeah. I mean, that's interesting too. Cause you know, there's a lot of, you know, indigenous languages that are kind of endangered now too. And you know, a lot of those folks are very key on, you know, keeping those things alive. And so, you know, like I would imagine that would establish a lot of trust with a community who rightfully has very little trust in American institutions, you know, could maybe feel a little bit more comfortable about that. That's very cool. That's very cool. Absolutely. Yeah. And

Chuck Rinker: 25:08

healthcare. We definitely, um. Have a, have a, uh, Slant and have, have a, have a problem with underrepresented, especially in the, the clinical trial space, I think is a, a prime case. I, I, I tell people that most people don't realize that, you know, women weren't even allowed to participate in clinical trials till like 1972. Um, and that's kind of a, that's one of those absurd stats you almost don't believe unless you look it up in, uh, uh, verify it yourself. But yeah, it's pretty, uh, pretty amazing.

Chris Brandt: 25:34

There, there's so many strange things like that. It's like, how did that, how did that happen? I mean, and I, and I, I like what you're talking about because I know that clinical trials are really hard to put together. I was talking to another company called Sightline and one of the things they do is they have large databases of previous clinical trials. So that if you're looking for a specific population, you can kind of. They can help guide you to find, find that, but, you know, like interacting with that population and, and, you know, servicing that population, getting them comfortable enough to participate in a trial, you know, getting them, uh, to a point where they can in their own native language, communicate the type of, um, you know, things that are, they're experiencing, you know, uh, that I think is, is going to give you a richer profile of how well, you know, the study's going, right?

Chuck Rinker: 26:26

Oh, absolutely. I don't think people realize how many clinical trials are either jeopardized or delayed because they can't reduce, they can't recruit the proper number of demographics, you know, a proper number of participants in the demographics they need to get their outcomes. And then you always have to worry about retention and losing them. And a lot of them are canceled afterwards. I think there was an interesting stat. I just got back from HIMSS 2024. I don't know if this number is true or not, but it's definitely one that I pulled from the trade show that, um, the cost just to get one patient. Recruiting into your trial, your study. There's one patient is between about 500 per patient. So that's not doing the trial. That's just getting that person through social media or outreach or call campaigns, whatever they have and get them to agree to be in your study. That's a that's an incredible financial burden on the trial providers in the health care system And just we did a work with the healthy nevada product and on average each site recruits about nationally Now these are just national numbers You can look them up if you're anybody wants to follow up with me after i'll give them the source But on average you're getting about 1. 6 patients per site per month. Not a whole lot We did a three month or actually about four months and it extended about four months and we recruited You We average almost 16 patients a month. So in four months we'd recruited 64 patients and it's because the patient are avatar to look like. The demographic they were targeting would ask just some real basic questions. We didn't do the full interview and consent. But it's just getting that attracting to people and getting that trust. Okay, I trust this person. This looks like something I'd be interested in talking to. Yeah, you know what, I'm going to give this one a shot. So it's really just more about that olive branch of communication.

Chris Brandt: 28:10

Well, and I, I know from talking to, to folks, you know, like putting these things together that these, it's getting a drug to. the stage of doing clinical trials, there's an enormous amount of expense that's already been, you know, put into that, right? And, um, if they can't get a proper cohort to do that testing, they could lose billions of dollars of development work that, you know, and that happens all the time. And it's literally billions of dollars, you know, so it is a, it is a huge risk that, you know, you can't get the right cohort for some of these things.

Chuck Rinker: 28:50

Very much so very much. So

Chris Brandt: 28:52

so tell me like like where where do you go from here? Like what's what are you gonna do next? I mean I could I could imagine like a million different ways that you could take this technology and do really cool things with it Right.

Chuck Rinker: 29:03

Yeah, and you're reiterating the biggest challenge we have is with a smaller company with we don't we don't have Microsoft resources or Amazon resource where small companies is trying to change things 1 piece at a time. We really are focusing on those repetitive mundane tasks that live staff doesn't need to burden on you talk about, you know, physician, burnout, nurse, burnout, healthcare, uh, employees overall. We really go, you know, if we could just take a little bit of time if I can save you Just four or five hours a week not trying to get you fired I'm trying to say if I gave you four or five hours that you didn't have to deal with these repetitive tasks Wouldn't that give you the freedom to elevate and do what only humans can do? So as far as the use cases you're talking about, we're really, something like that. Um, we're really focusing on those use cases. Um, I know, uh, we've had a long term relationship with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts as well. They have a really intriguing use case. Of, um, how to offer and how to give people, um, during the open enrollment period and retention period, how to give them the information they need to make an informed decision on what healthcare insurance plan as is best for them. So outside of screening and having people on cold calls and having your HR department try to get your employees in, you can really give some basic information on what plan your employee offers and what, what benefits it would get to you. And then. Once you get to a point where you're going, okay, you know, I think I want this one, or I think I like this, then it will pass it off to the Blue Cross Blue Shield rep. So it's not meant to replace them. It's just meant to be more of a, um, you can almost call it screening, a pre screening. Yeah. And we're doing, we're doing pitch pitches right now with another, um, uh, donor management system provider for helping screen for, um, uh, people will be doing like plasma donations. And the workforce required to do the screening on patient screening is another good use case. I think, um, um, so we're hopefully doing more in that, that, that realm as well. So all, all those cases where you just don't have the physical staff to handle the tier one. Or what we'll call tier one support. It's kind of like that first point of contact. We don't want to replace everybody. We want to attract, analyze if that person's a good fit. And then, um, um, you know, help the patients with that recurring repetitive, uh, type tasks that, that human, human talent doesn't need to be doing every day.

Chris Brandt: 31:35

Well, I mean, that's, that's sort of the ideal promise of artificial intelligence, right? I mean, it's not that it's going to replace all these people. It's just going to make people's lives better because they're going to be doing more meaningful work. Um, you know, I, I think that's, that's sort of the best case scenario we've got going here. So

Chuck Rinker: 31:54

yeah, not, not to interject there, but that's the number one complaint we get. Everybody believes we're trying to replace humans. That's why I strive. We're human communication, not replication. We also look and go, well, you know what? People didn't complain. They complain. Some people complain. Probably the manual typewriter people when you got laptops coming along. Everybody was talking about secretaries losing their job. But think about the productivity gains that got out, got out of it. And I kind of like to jokingly tell people, well, We just have a better keyboard mouse. Our laptops just have eyes. Our laptops just have a face and can talk to you in a human voice. Um, so, so we really try to stress that it really is, at the end of the day, a productivity tool, not a human, not a human collateral replacement.

Chris Brandt: 32:36

Yeah. Well, I don't know if it was like Neil Stephenson or, you know, who, or, uh, William Gibson or something. They said the future's already here, but it's just unevenly distributed. That's

Chuck Rinker: 32:48

good. I hadn't heard that one, but I like that.

Chris Brandt: 32:51

I think this is really cool stuff. I mean, I just, I like, I like this stuff and, you know, now with some of the robotics that are coming in and all that, you know, who knows what the future of all this is. Although I think robotics are going to go the other way and be a little scary. Yeah. Yeah. From what I've seen of robotics. Robotics. Um, yeah. But, uh, you know, like that, that's it. I think like what you're doing, I love the approach you're taking, you know, just like really, um, looking at the end user and seeing what they need and providing that. And, and I know, you know, like healthcare is so broken, you know, any help we can give The healthcare industry is, is going to be valued. I, I, I can't, I have to imagine. So thanks so much for, uh, being on telling us about personas. I, I, I dig what you're doing and, um, you know, keep in touch and, and I want to hear about some more great, cool use cases from you guys.

Chuck Rinker: 33:38

Absolutely. As always, I enjoyed the conversation, Chris, and I do sincerely appreciate you. Uh, give me the time to talk to you and your audience.

Chris Brandt: 33:46

Thanks for watching. I'd love to hear from you in the comments. And if you could, please give us a like, subscribe and share this episode with a friend who might be interested. And I will see you in the next one.