Healthcare automation is nearer than you think.

A lot of healthcare is actually highly repetitive.

And highly predictable processes are usually efficient.

Why then are healthcare costs rising, and doctors struggling to meet demand?

One reason is that these highly stereotyped, repetitive tasks are still being performed by humans — doctors, nurses, specialists. Other professional industries such as law and banking have seen their most burnout-inducing, routine tasks automated by software. Yet until now, the clinical conversation remains the bastion of the human clinician. I would argue this represents a bottleneck in scaling digital care pathways.

Introducing Dora.

What if we could use some of the most cutting-edge technologies to replace routine conversations with patients?

Dora is an AI-powered conversational assistant that is able to have phone conversations with patients. “Yet another app?” you may think. What is unique about Dora, is that it calls patients through a simple phone call. There’s no training, app download, or specific device. Patients simply pick up the phone and have a conversation, just like they would to a doctor or a nurse.

What’s cool about Ufonia’s Dora platform, is that it’s taking sophisticated AI & natural-language processing technologies, but delivering them through an accessible medium. This is especially important for older, less digitally able patients who are a majority of healthcare users.

Does it work?

Nearly 200 patients have recently participated in a clinical trial of Dora calling to follow-up after their cataract surgery at an NHS Trust. Two interim findings really stand out:

• The average age of participants was 76.
• These participants gave Dora an average net-promoter score (NPS)* of 9 out of 10.

I challenge you to find another digital health intervention where such an elderly group was able to engage so well with a novel technology with no training!

Unlocking new models of care.

The fundamental insight is that in every care pathway, there will be highly stereotyped activities that can now be automated by applying new technologies. Dora is just one example of this.

This really unlocks a whole new way of thinking about delivering care. For example, you start to realise that the nature of doctor “appointments” is really a result of labor constraints, and not dictated by patient needs.

Automated models of care liberate us from such constraints. You start to think about the ability to check in on your patients at times where you ordinarily wouldn’t be working. Patients can all be called simultaneously, and only those that really need it can be called back or brought in for a review.

I don’t believe clinicians can ever be fully replaced, but maybe it’s time we get out of our own way and think about how automation can help us scale our impact, and focus on the patients that need us most.

*A net promoter score asks on a scale of 1 to 10 how much you would recommend the service to a friend.