Transcription:

Roxanna Gapstur: On this episode of Inspiring Health, we're looking into the future and talking about innovative trends in healthcare. WellSpan has been re-imagining healthcare and how we can make it easier, better, and more accessible for our patients and communities.

Joining me today is Mark Kandrysawtz, Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer for WellSpan. Mark leads Research and Development, Marketing, Branding, and Creative for our system. Prior to joining WellSpan, he helped businesses improve through innovation and focusing on human-centered design and user experience. And over the last few months, he presented at the Healthcare Leaders Marketing NOW Summit, and he's been quoted several times on Becker's Hospital Review about healthcare innovation. Mark, thanks for being here.

Mark Kandrysawtz: Thanks so much for having me. It's my pleasure. And I can't think of a better topic to focus on than healthcare innovation. I could talk about it all day. But I like to think about healthcare innovation as really improving the human experience. And we think about that as improving the experience of consuming care, of delivering care, of managing care. So really putting the people at the center of the process. And while we really think about it through the lens of people, we also like to have a little bit of fun with it. You can think about us as kind of the Q Division from James Bond, but for healthcare.

Roxanna Gapstur: What a great analogy. I love thinking about WellSpan as having our own Q Division. Speaking of which, the innovations teams developed some unique platforms recently that have the potential to change how patients interact with WellSpan. Can you tell us more about some of those?

Mark Kandrysawtz: Sure. The first story I can tell is about madelinerx.com or Madeline. Madeline is a platform that allows women to get access to birth control from home without having to have a doctor's visit. And the reason why we created Madeline is because we saw that there was a lot of investment in Silicon Valley, particularly in technology for women.

In fact, we know that in Silicon Valley this year, there was about a billion dollars of investment and new funding for startups for women. The broader health tech industry saw about 14.5 billion dollars of investment. So we know that there's a lot of people thinking differently about how to deliver care easier and more conveniently for people that need it.

MadelineRX allowed us to deliver contraceptives to women online, which allows us to deliver on convenience, but it also solved another problem that we see as a health system. We know that there's a lot of new solutions where people can get care online, but many of those force you to get care by a provider that's somewhere really far away and doesn't know who you are. So with Madeline, we sought to solve both, deliver on convenience while maintaining the strength of a relationship with a provider that's near you that you could trust.

Roxanna Gapstur: Mark, I loved this concept when we unveiled it. It's such a great example of how WellSpan's thinking about healthcare differently. These products are offered by other companies in the market, but may lack the ability to connect their customers with the expertise and one-on-one service that Madeline can.

One of the challenges facing healthcare today is that it isn't convenient for patients. Madeline helps remove some of the extra steps for patients, but it's only the tip of the iceberg for innovative projects focusing on convenience. Can you talk a little bit about Duo Healthcare?

Mark Kandrysawtz: Sure. So we took the same approach we did with Madeline to a different target audience in the development of Duo Healthcare. With Duo, we knew that a lot of people have options to receive primary care online, but just like Madeline, those providers might be really far away and they may not know you. So Duo Healthcare is our answer to creating a new model of care that bridges the gap between primary care and online experience and a coach who can really help you achieve all of your healthcare goals. So it's not just your traditional appointment online. It's an entirely new way of getting well and staying well.

Roxanna Gapstur: Yeah. Duo Healthcare really has the potential to shift how people think about healthcare. I'm curious to know more about how you and your team conceptualize these initiatives, Mark? Where do you draw inspiration from?

Mark Kandrysawtz: Our innovation process is really built upon human-centered design. And what that means for us is we start every project with primary research with our target audience. We seek to truly know them, what they care about, what problems need to be solved. And we allow their human experience to inspire and guide our ideas for solutions that we create.

This is a little different from the way some other organizations think about innovation. Some might think about what they're already good at and how they can get even better at it. And while that's really important, we have teams of people here at WellSpan that do that constant improvement work every single day. In fact, it's something we all focus on. But we need to do more than that. We need to dig deeper into the experiences that we deliver for customers and find new solutions that they may not have even known that they needed them. We call this what if thinking? We allow ourselves to challenge the status quo and think about it a little differently.

Roxanna Gapstur: WellSpan uses predictive analytics to interpret the mountains of data that we have available and to mine it, finding what cannot be seen on the surface. In a way, you're using predictive analytics to look at market trends, both what is successful and what isn't, and using that information to re-imagine healthcare. As you look at what is trending in healthcare at the moment, Mark, can you provide a glimpse into what will influence the industry over the next few years?

Mark Kandrysawtz: Absolutely. So the easiest way to get a glimpse into our future is to look to the consumer industry, to see where other brands and organizations are innovating. And like we've seen, many of the innovations that occur in the products and services people use every day find their way to healthcare. So what do we see on the horizon? We see artificial intelligence, both in the exam room and as part of the consumer experience. And I can give you a couple examples if you want to hear about them right now.

Roxanna Gapstur: Oh, that would be great.

Mark Kandrysawtz: So let's talk about the exam room. The first is about a pilot we've completed around a technology called DAX or Dragon Ambient Experience. This technology allows our providers to have a natural conversation with their patient and not be focused on a computer screen or a keyboard. This allows them to return to the type of medicine they were trained to deliver from the beginning, instead of having to be expert technology users.

The artificial intelligence listens to that conversation and translates it into a meaningful high efficacy clinical note. It's remarkable what our providers have communicated about their experience using this technology. It's so interesting that computers, artificial intelligence and machine learning has allowed for a more human experience between the provider and the patient. In fact, 98% of providers who have used DAX say that they can't imagine practicing medicine without it.

Now, let's talk about artificial intelligence in the consumer experience. We know that, for years, consumers have interacted with AI through numerous channels. In fact, my four-year-old is an expert at talking to Alexa at home. So surely, if she can use Alexa to play a fun YouTube kid's video, then I know that we can use artificial intelligence to make it easier and more seamless to schedule an appointment, to pay your bill or to learn about important health topics. So we're turning our attention from the exam room now to the consumer experience, bringing new and interesting ways for people to interact with the health system.

We're not stopping there. There's a massive amount of change occurring in healthcare right now. And there's nothing like a global pandemic to create the right environment for innovation. Some analysts say that about $250 billion of US healthcare spend will shift to digital health in the coming years. And so we need to be prepared to be leaders in that area, not just followers.

Some of the areas will be focused on in addition to artificial intelligence are how to deliver a more retail-like experience, how might we offer more services in the home? Things like diagnostics and testing at home, not just a video visit. And we're looking at how we can do more with technology to provide greater access so we can serve more people.

Roxanna Gapstur: Mark, it's really exciting what you and your team are doing to continually ask what if and think about healthcare differently. I want to thank you again for joining me today and providing a glimpse into the innovative design that will allow WellSpan to re-imagine and inspire health in our community. We don't often have an opportunity to see the inner workings of our Q Division, but it is exhilarating to talk about planning for the future from the viewpoint of a leader instead of a follower.

Mark Kandrysawtz: Thanks so much for having me, Roxanna.

Roxanna Gapstur: That's all the time we have for today. We hope you'll join us for the next episode of Inspiring Health.