How AI Transforms Healthcare Follow Ups with RJ Burnham

Right now there's no good ways to automate that workflow. That's this is a key workflow. It exists across everything. It's all done by hand. And that's the problem we're trying to solve is to make this a reproducible engine [snorts] that can drop into the health care systems as they exist today. Because the last thing you want to do is try and give nurses and doctors another tool to administer and work through. They're already overloaded with technology. So we're really trying to embed it in the existing platforms that they already use today and integrate it that way. >> Hi, my name is Demetri Bonichi and I'm a content creator, agency owner, and AI enthusiast. You're listening to the AI agents podcast brought to you by Jot Form and featuring our very own CEO and founder, Idkin Tank. This is the show where artificial intelligence meets innovation,

productivity, and the tools shaping the future of work. Enjoy the show. Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the AI agents podcast. In this episode we have R.J. Bernham, the founder and CEO of Conc. How you doing today, R.J.? >> Doing well, Demitri. Thank you so much for having me on today. >> Yeah, excited to chat. Um, first of all, let's just kick things off by uh, you know, getting a little bit of insight as to your background and how you got into AI in the first place. Oh, so I have my like I mentioned uh my name is R.J. I was founder here at Conig and I've actually spent my whole career building communication platforms. Uh it's been almost three decades working in the field of as we now call it uh voice AI. Uh in the past it was really called

telecom or speech recognition or natural language uh around it. And it's been kind of fun to spend the career kind of pushing the limits of what's possible with uh with voice. >> Yeah. Very cool. Um and you obviously guys are in the uh healthcare sector, right? So >> yeah, we've really kind of focused in around sort of the problems in healthcare and you know I I really look at I've spent my career building more platform type companies. Uh and when we started Conig, we started out kind of the mission to kind of understand problems in a couple industries and time and time again we kept coming back to health care and really comes down to I feel like healthc care is one of those places where communication just sucks. Uh especially as a patient I'm a care person. I don't come from that industry. I

don't come from that world. Uh, and it's been interesting to break into this and but my core piece of, you know, I've been, I sort of joke a prolevel health care user. Uh, I have a daughter with special needs. I've had been done a lot of stuff throughout the health care system. I've learned to be an advocate and how to fight and follow up and get chase things down. But it's way harder than it should. And as I started looking at it w with the background of voice kind of came to the conclusion that mate maybe this is an industry where we can actually make it better and actually better for both sides. Uh, one of my frustrations with voice AI and IVR and communications technology is it's usually heavily focused on just doing cost savings for the company deploying it that you always look

at how do I just automate conversations >> and healthcare is one of the places where I actually think it really can do a better outcome both as a patient and I I look through that lens of like what would I want as a being from a technology and communication perspective and for providers and payers the insurance companies, the hospital systems around it. Uh because we have a problem in healthcare. There's not enough nurses, there's not enough providers, and there's a huge huge labor shortage in this field. And so much time right now that they spend is wasted on the stupidest things. And that's kind of been what drove me to say, hey, why don't we go tackle this and take it on? >> Yeah. No, that that that makes a lot of sense. So, what do you think is the um way that you guys

are specifically handling it and um helping the people who are, you know, dealing with these problems out like and and maybe if if possible, I think a scenario would help. I remember you went through an example scenario on our pre-c screen and it was pretty good. So, just kind of go into that. I'd love to hear a little bit more about how you guys were helping and uh maybe the audience could, you know, >> benefit from something like that. The thing that's kind of happened over the last piece is I spent at the first stage of the company uh basically a ton of time just doing problem discovery. I was it's amazing you go and connect with people on LinkedIn and just ask them to talk about the problems and that they see in their business and scaling it and didn't want to sell anything.

I just wanted to learn and end up having probably 50 60 of these across healthcare and we really started to see a common pattern which was a lot of time is wasted actually getting a patient on the phone to be able to have a conversation. Maybe this is an post discharge follow-up after someone's been in the hospital. Uh the nurses usually have a big stack of paper of cases that they're supposed to check in with it. How often does anyone ever get a hold of you in those cases? Almost never. It doesn't happen. Um maybe it's in making sure that after your physical that you actually did the exams and pieces around it. Maybe it's an appointment reminder. No matter what you call this, whether it's in home health care, whether it's in telealth, they all have this same core reproducible workflow around getting a

patient on the phone, actually getting them to connect. I don't know about you, but I don't answer most of the phone calls that come into my phone anymore if I don't recognize the number. Uh that's that that's the very first challenge. Add to it, we have things like call screeners and stuff that make it really hard and difficult for automation to make their way through it. We then in healthcare have to make sure that the person we're calling is it really the right person? Am I really talking Dimmitri? Can I validate stuff before we start sharing health information around the home? There's a lot of rules and regulations to to protect that for a good reason. And then lastly, if I got through all those gates, can you actually talk right now, Demetri? Where are you in the car? Are you distracted? Is there a

better time? >> Yeah. >> All of that can easily take three, four minutes to make your way through. And right now in healthcare, they have people doing that. They're having nurses do this. This is the most resource constrained person in healthcare. And they're having them do that workflow. And it's crazy. It blows my mind. I come, you know, I come from how you automate and scale outbound calls and go through it and you go back and say, why are you doing this? Uh, we had a great workshop working with, uh, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida. Uh, >> and it was really interesting. They actually know with very high certainty who is going to probably be readmitted into the hospital after a ER visit. Uh they know from the data that if you've been to the hospital twice in about two weeks, there's a 50%

chance you're going to be at going there a third. And if you go there, >> it's a 50% chance you're going to go a fourth. And it actually goes all the way down to like five or six. >> So they actually have a 100 nurses on staff doing outreach and trying to intervene around this. The problem is when they did the analysis, they see that 60% of the time they spend is doing the wasted conversations that I just outlined. And this is an area where we like really want to see and think that we can do and help automate portions of this because this is absolutely solvable. And let's have nurses instead of having 15 clinical conversations, let's get them to having 30 and really improve Abby outcomes. And that's 30 patients that each of those nurses then can have a follow-up with, which before

would have been half of that. >> I think a lot of people tend to have a aha moment when you when you talk about these types of things, right? Like I personally when you when you discuss it and as I've done this podcast more and more, every person I have that talks about healthcare issues. Truthfully, I think it is so funny that then I just go back to and think about all the different um conversations that I've had um complaining about healthcare and the context behind what could be I feel like is always not actually that um it's not there in the conversation. It's like we're complaining. We don't actually we don't even know what could be better and what are the the issues causing it. And as I've interviewed more people like yourself, um I've interviewed a couple people in this space that are,

you know, trying to help out with healthcare. it kind of seems very apparent that, you know, they're just they're struggling for time and a lot of it's this nonsense uh this nonsense paperwork and you you're probably providing one of the first like communication um solutions. I haven't had that yet. Um I've had other solutions uh where it's kind of like um more about helping them with the paperwork side of things and that kind of thing. But this this is definitely the first I've seen with um the communication which I think is awesome. So what is your kind of like um thought on how necessarily you can do this at a practical level? Uh and and what has kind of the reception been like for uh clients that you've helped out and and kind of like how how did you even get a footing in the

market in general? >> So you know the first thing is trying to actually describe the problem the right way and the incentives within healthcare uh When I first started working with healthcare, the challenge realiz is they speak frankly a foreign language. It's a completely [laughter] >> coming in as a non-healthcare person. there's so much terminology to understand and it's a huge >> uh you also have this really interesting dynamic that there are huge sort of like balancing you know I call I call it like opposing AIS depending on whether you're selling to providers and doctors and nurses as opposed to if you're selling to the insurance and the payers >> oh okay >> all these different incentives and what you really have to ultimately do is figure ultimately find out what the real impact is and how are they compensated how what is the financial

model underneath it that's a little tough as an outsider I will tell you that's actually that's been my biggest challenge breaking into healthcare is to gro and get around us and been lucky enough to get some really great adviserss who have helped navigate that but that's the first thing that you need to really do is actually be able to describe to them why this matters Because if you just tell them, I'm going to save nurse time and this other stuff, they they get it, but it doesn't click. But if you can then connect it, for example, to things like star scores that explain what their reimbursement rates are going to be for Medicaid or medic Medicare, all of a sudden that kind of pushes in there. I hate to say this, it's healthcare is very much a business, especially in the United States. Sure. >>

You know, it it's a little western. You you tee this up. I have had the opportunity to see health care in three different countries. I have a lot of years in the US system. Portugal I've seen through it. Uh I've seen it some of Brazil. You know, there's pros and cons to all of them. They have drops and downs. Uh but I the US system is just it is such a machine uh financially driven and it's I don't know how to >> I I would not push back on the sentiment. I think I agree it is a machine and it is a business. I would push back on. It's not an efficient machine. I tell you what, like machine kind of implies a machine implies efficiency, which I would uh I would push back on because I have had so many funny experiences where I

want to try to not Okay, how do I word this? Okay, I'm not going to be in public on this statement. So uh I have gone to doctor's offices and I have a consistent experience where there is a um let's just say disgruntled receptionist um who does not seem to want to help me in any context and it is a very disconcerting experience when it's about my health. I commonly and this could just be my bad personal donal experience but when I talk to people it seems pretty universal. It's like, and some of it's like, I don't want to blame the person, maybe it's that they're overwhelmed with too many things, but they don't quite seem to know all the details. And the only thing they do seem to know how to do on a very good level [snorts] is simply put ask for your

money accurately. Whereas, I have family members who've had different surgeries and stuff that have kind of come up. And while I think that it is the onus of the person to make sure that they do their follow-up appointments, the fact that they haven't figured out some sort of like automated this person had X problem, we should send them an a Y automated sequence just making them feel like we give a crap, you know, about like about like, oh, hey, you have your sphincter like uh appointment for for next year for like your esophagus. Like you should we don't forget about that. Hopefully you're you're drinking like you're you're not drinking as much alcohol. you're eating is less fatty food. Like like anything any follow-up emails whatsoever would be standard in the protocol of attempting to um because if they're going to treat it like a

business in the context of wanting to make as much money as possible. I actually think as much as it is good from a personal standpoint, I think it's worse that they don't do those sort of like kind nurturing things that like your standard business practice does on any sort of like recurring sales basis. You know what I'm saying? Am I making sense? >> No, absolutely. I and listen there is some things driving changes around our portion you know elements of that uh behind the scenes and I do think there's I think we will see improvements in portions of this as things transition there is definitely an effort to move towards more outcomebased payments uh for the providers and the insurance elements around it from a reimbursement perspective is tough uh but you literally hit right on there I think to me is the core use

case and why I think it's we can improve outcomes on this is when you go into a doctor and you have your follow-up, nobody ever follows up to go through it. Now, the thing is when you're in when you're sick, you're actually at the least capable stage of your life to be responsible and be thinking about all the followup and the things that go through. you're by by very nature of the fact that you're sick not operating at 100% and thinking about this and so much stuff just gets dropped and not done because >> you're not in a either you're not in a state to do it yourself or then you forget about it. We're all humans. We all tend to focus more. Yeah. Once it drops our mind, those exams and things like that go through. I've had all the time where if someone

actually followed up and checked in and had a conversation and say, "Hey, how was it going?" Not just the reminder of texts. We all get texts. We all get emails. We ignore that. We're overloaded with notifications. But I think the core portion is to actually have a conversation. And that's really what we are trying to build. I said I don't we can automate a lot of things but I actually want to I actually want to scale and build more health care conversations and that's to me the real driver of trying to build is actually get a real conversation between a provider and a patient and I think if that can happen we're going to get better outcomes on stuff. >> I think that's fair. Um that's that's that's a good that's a good thought. I do think the conversation be like if I did get

a phone call, right, it would make me feel a lot better if then it was an automated email. But even just having something in the system in order for them to automatically have [clears throat] >> the conversation. >> The problem is right now there's no good ways to automate that workflow. That's a this is a key workflow. It exists across everything, but there's really it's all done by hand. And that's the first problem we're trying to solve is to make this a reproducible engine that can drop into the health care systems as they exist today because the last thing you want to do is try and give nurses and doctors another tool to administer and work through and go through it that just they're already overloaded with >> And how's it gone so far? >> So far it's been it's been really good. We've really,

you know, looked at how we partner with some of the providers around there. We're focusing on specific subsegments uh outside. Dental is a great place. There's actually dental is probably one of the areas that's the most willing to jump on stuff and it's actually interesting. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> That's dental's a little it's actually a reoccurring revenue business when you get when you >> Absolutely. because you have to go back. >> Yeah. And actually they are it's well it is and actually it's churn. If you miss an appointment you are you quickly become churn. If you cancel your appointment the odds of you actually rebooking another one goes down tremendously until you have a problem and then you come back in on my twothirds. Now you going back and get back into the system. And it's actually funny. I've actually noticed this. The official dentist's

office actually they now book your next appointment before you ever leave the chair. that and I I I I I haven't talked for sure about threat that but I'm pretty sure that's from operationally of getting you back in making sure you get your six-month appointment and keeping you in the system around it. So, it's been interesting. Dental is one of the places I've seen the most adoption of technology and thinking about it almost the way we think about software subscriptions and stuff like that. >> Interesting. Yeah. No, that that's fair. Um what do you think is the um uh you know actually with dental stuff? Yeah, just to kind of follow up on that, I I actually said something funny which is like it's kind of a required recurring thing. I feel like it's it's technic I mean from a technical standpoint, no one has

to go to the dentist. Um but they kind of get you on a recurring model by being like, well, when are you going to schedule your next um thing? When are you going to schedule your next thing? which I does do feel like in in some cases with specific um like just to talk with my my personal experience like I know the person who had like that surgery never was asked like when are you going to schedule your follow-up for this like major surgery which just not to belabor the point sounds psychotic. I that's to me >> there's so there's so many places especially on the where is something yet dental is as you said it's relatively routine it's relatively in most cases low low risk it's these major life events major when you go into the ER the major surgery often you don't have

a case worker sometime some of the hospital systems are starting to work around having a case worker that kind of is assigned to you but they're overloaded they don't have the time to get a hold of everybody and that's where it usually gets dropped and that that's that's what I would love to try and change somehow. >> Yeah. And uh could you I don't know if you have the ability to get into it more but could you talk a little bit more about any of the type of uh experiences that you have had and like how it's going right now? No, I mean the the biggest portion that we're starting to explore, you know, with consig is just partnering with really any of the places where they have a patient are focused around the patient experience and communication. So part of what the discoveries we're

doing right now is going into and leveraging what we've done with the plug-and-play program to go in and do problem discovery with folks. uh the thing I'm finding a lot of times especially in the payer and uh environments the which is you know payers healthcare speak for insurance companies uh the providers are really the doctors nurses the first thing to do is find a good champion who understands where the problems are and that you can then kind of partner with them to say all right here look at this is where you have a huge inefficiency and let's build a model that shows we can take and automate this portion of the workflow and you're going to go change the number of clinical conversations from X to Y. And by the way, you're also going to actually reduce provider burnout because those nurses, they didn't sign

up into going into nursing to leave voicemails. That's that's a horrible use of their time. That's not what they want to be doing with their life. They usually joined medicine because they want to talk to patients and they want to work with patients and improve improve people's lives. So when you take off that stuff all of a sudden they start getting a lot happier. Uh a good example is what like actually our lighthouse first customer SQM they were in charge of doing patient followup or claim follow-up for the insurance companies. They have a couple hundred insurance companies. They do on order of around a million patient follow-ups a year. uh and they were having the staff do this by hand and we were able to go in automate that first portion of the invite getting what I've talked to you about as the outreach flow

>> and we ended up saving them the equivalent of 10 FTEEs that they were able to move to other portions business scale through it >> uh was around as you know it was over a $700,000 a year savings uh for them at this because this isn't low wage call center workers this is folks that have worked in healthcare professional was a much higher cost of uh people all this and we took off all that first touch for them and their you know the secondary po bonus with them was their employee retention went through the roof because they took the worst part of the job off them on that side which was getting people on the phone asking them if it was a good time and the stats the data is there it was like 80% of the time when they did get connected it wasn't

a good time they needed to schedule a call back people say, "I don't even when they were doing a follow-up on a claim, someone says, "I don't want to talk about that right now." Whatever. So, we were able to take and automate 80% of the calls that they were having to do by hand. Yeah. Oh, wow. That's that's pretty cool. And what would you say is um you I got to ask because obviously you're not in the States. Would you say that this by the way these problems are more universal than we'd imagine? I know we mainly talked about the states. Do you have any I mean you've I don't know if you you know people in you said you're in Lisbon so that's Spain right? No, >> no, it it it is different in there. It is I'd say it I I do believe

it is universal across um the dynamics are slightly different uh because when you go in you know the difference country cell systems >> the metric you know the behavior and everything is very very different with how you go through it. Uh just by example in Portugal you actually have a lot more access to the doctor when you go to the doctor than you do in the US. In the US you go your visit you see a you know physician assistant gets all your vitals and then you get like five minutes with the doctor and that has to be like your intense element around it. Uh when I book an appointment, I was actually blown away the first time I booked a appointment with a doctor because there was no nurse, there was no physician assistant >> really >> literally just go into the doctor's office

and >> you know I had a half hour with him and yet the time you know without my appointment slot that was booked for that that was my time uh and you're just talking with the doctor there is no assistant uh and it's a completely different type of interaction. Um, I will say the follow-up is not very good. Nobody, it is a case where nobody does any sort of follow-up. That part's not there. But the actual sort of patient doctor communication is much higher bandwidth because I actually have a half hour that I can go and ask questions and they go go through it. >> It's a much longer period of time. >> Yeah, it's a complete I and also I remember like Yeah, the thing that really blew me away was when I leave he's like, "Yeah, if this isn't working, don't worry about

getting an appointment. just come check grab my knock on my door between appointments. Uh come back by the office, you know, cuz I it's I know it's hard to get an appointment. Just check in and I'll grab you for five minutes if this isn't working next week. >> Really? That's nice. >> It was a completely different piece. Uh so I do think coming to it the way you the follow-up problem exists universally but the as the patient experience it is different. It is very different regionally. Uh, and I think that's just unfortunately the US system is the US system. >> Yeah. No, interesting. I um I'm glad to I like that context. That helps me out. I I wasn't um wasn't aware of that. I mean, I remember I I broke my or not broke my ankle, I sprained my ankle really bad when I

was in Rome. Um and it was actually a pretty interesting experience that whole thing. But um I I I have never had any healthcare outside of the states besides that one instance. So very interesting. Um are you primarily focusing on the US market though? We are focusing we are really focusing as the first place the US market uh >> is where I think there's the biggest impact uh the uh around us and it's just you know there's more dollars spent in the US there's more opportunity to save but you know I say I sometimes joke healthcare is a target-rich environment for this type of stuff so it's hard but uh maybe it's crazy I like to I like to try hard things and go after it so >> yeah totally fair. What do you think is the um next big thing that you'd like to

implement to your product to uh make it better? >> Well, the I think the next piece around this is taking the core workflow that we've built and making it much easier from an integration perspective. We're building a set of out of the box connectors so that we can basically get a customer up and running in, you know, a couple days, a couple weeks instead of go some of the longer onboarding stuff. Right now, it's gone pretty quick. We can go through it but we really see the integration stage that everything's in there is a key portion. The other portion and I didn't really touch on this earlier is the whole and where we see there's a big difference around this is all the compliance. Healthcare is such a compliance driven industry >> and what we've been building out is a compliance engine that handles all

the different regulatory rules. So let me give you what does that mean? The US is this crazy hodgepodge of different rules in every state. You have standard rules about making phone calls that have been around for a long time, kind of table stakes. You have healthcare rules. It can vary state by state. Uh my go-to example that I find crazy is if you're in mental health and your therapist calls you for a follow-up or something like that, they actually can lose their license if they treat you and you're across state lines. >> Wow. traveling on vacation, they are not allowed to have any clinical conversation with you. Uh and you know the comp you know how strictly this gets followed it varies place to place but especially for the big health systems and big health groups they really have to understand this. Uh and then

we have the right now whack-a-ole world of AI rules that are coming into it. Every state is passing their own versions of this. uh on all there's about 500 different little rules around AI and communication going in place and a big portion of what we've been building out is compliance engine that which basically enforces the different rules depending on where the patient is while you're calling are you doing clinical versus uh administrative conversations you may have to give one set of uh disclaimers if you're calling someone in let's say Utah uh I give it an example and you they just passed a rule in Utah. If you're having a scheduling conversation and you have generative AI in there, you just have to answer that yes, I'm generative AI in a voice interface if it is there if the patient asks. However, if it's clinical and

you go down a clinical path, you actually have to get affirmative consent from the patient that they know generative AI is in that conversation. >> And mapping this for every state and every scenario is crazy. And so this has been the big place that we've doubled down and built out as a core engine around this. So >> interesting. So um kind of to get some more context on where you think this is going to head, how um do you feel like this is there's no goal here to replace anybody in the healthcare space, right? Like I mean not well that was a little too targeted. I mean a lot of people are talking about how like oh how is AI going to impact jobs? How do you think practically this is going to impact jobs? Do you think it's going to just make it easier

for healthcare workers to do more um that are more and have better care um given um than anything? >> So this this is a big question and this is actually one of the reasons why I kind of really liked the idea of working in healthcare. >> Sure. >> This is a spot where there is not enough human capacity to provide for it. uh there aren't enough doctors, there aren't enough nurses, we have a shortage and I fundamentally believe that this is a spot where the techn you we can deploy the talk technology allow it to scale and let them do a lot more care rather than cut the number of providers. Now >> we live in a world of Yeah, we we we live in a place where there's going to be some places where they try and cut corners. Cost is trying trying to

be reduced, but the conversations we've had with our customers at this point, it's not about cutting people, but it's letting them scale what they can do. >> Good. Well, that makes that makes sense. And I I'm glad to hear that. I think uh a lot of people are probably concerned about that um to be honest. And I >> I am I mean that and I think in a lot of industries that's a big element now there's certainly I think help portions of healthcare that are probably susceptible to portion to some of that uh as well uh but uh you know we it's it's a challenge as we think about all of this side. though. >> No, totally. And and I don't blame you for uh well, I one I just appreciate you for for the honesty and stuff because I think uh sometimes people are

like, "Oh, they'd act like it wouldn't occur." And especially in a healthcare industry, I do think that's probably a big concern of the average individual, right? Is that like they're they're already kind of skimping. [laughter] Listen, this seems honestly an area that's there's portion some of the use cases you talk about people get very nervous about. Um, do you want an AI model deciding whether to reject claims or not? Do you want a AI model saying and there's a ton of the there's a ton of use cases and stuff that I look in healthcare and I say >> there is some scary stuff to figure out. Uh and I don't I honestly I fundamentally feel like healthc care is a spot that you need humans you because ultimately care I really do believe is human. Now machine and AI can do a lot of things

and help but I I I get nervous when I see some of the applications on that side around you know allowing access to care or not with AI. Well, let's talk about that a little bit more then. I think it's a good probably transition into this other topic because I I appreciate that. uh Cander, what is the um other kind of areas that maybe we're not talking about where there could be concerns with AI or um where do you think it might head right in this context of you know what the healthcare providers and companies um big bigger healthcare company like not not the providers the providers I think in in pretty much all cases are kind of um exempt from this conversation as to culpability uh but where do you think kind of the concerns are for this industry and and how AI could

be used. May I think that one of the challenges and you see this is and I could kind of open with this you know you do have this now battle of AI on both sides of where the providers are using AI to figure out how to build the most expensive code and the best revenue health code to the insurance companies and the insurance companies are looking at AI to try and like stop that and make sure that things aren't overbuild and this is one of those areas I look at it I'm just like this is I think we're trying to solve the wrong problem here. Uh because it's not actually about improving patients. It's not trying to make it more efficient. It literally is just about uh the revenue battle between these different entities. And that that side as an outsider, you know, sits uh

strangely with me. I understand the financial incentives on all that. uh you know the one that probably sits the biggest question to me is use of AI around claim processing on one hand it's very you know it's a very manual process but I really feel like a denial yeah if someone's going to deny coverage that shouldn't come from a model that needs to come from a person yeah >> I listen I'm not I'm now just speaking as a per as a individual and but that that to me is one of you know and I've had conversations with folks at healthare I'm like >> I don't if you ask me is it good for health care to be able to use AI to approve absolutely use that to scale that but make sure that a human is in the loop on a denial or when you're

going to do something bad and make sure that that that to me is the important part is can we actually go through and deploy AI responsibly that you're not, you know, you're speeding things up and then making sure that now the people can actually look at the tough cases and evaluate it the right way. >> Yeah, there people are on there are people on the other side of this, you know. So, that that's definitely something to to note and I appreciate you for bringing that up. So, no, that's that's fair. It's a it's a tough bit and I understand both sides of this, but uh that's but that that's the spot that gives me the biggest uh heartburn when I think about how this technology goes into play over the next several years. >> Yeah. No, fair. And uh just to kind of follow up

with this, what do you think is the um you know on a more positive note, what do you think in a in the grand scheme of things something that could be your vision for what kind of positive impact you'll make in the aggregate on uh the world of healthcare in the next 3 to 5 years? What would be perfect world? Who's using your product? Um you know what's the uh what's the >> in my perfect vision? Every patient gets follow-up conversations from their providers and the professionals in the healthcare that >> that doesn't happen now. No, you there isn't most people never get followed up. And that would be my perfect vision is that someone checks in, sees how you're doing, and actually can, you know, help you when you're not uh do it in a good spot. >> Yeah. No, it's fair. Um totally

agree. Uh I I I can't quite imagine this will be easy, right? Um I do think there's a lot of barriers to entry. I do think there's a lot What do you think is the the biggest barrier to entry? Um and for stopping that vision. [sighs] >> Um the biggest barrier is just the complexity in healthcare. The IT systems are all very fragmented. it's the data doesn't flow from one place to the other. Um so I think that in some ways that's going to be the biggest challenge to adopt this. Um because it's not always a a simple drop in one piece around there's no one system of record that usually has everything. Uh unfortunately that I think is in many ways the technical barrier. I think on the adoption barrier, it is going to be trying to figure out and align things to the

financial incentives to go through it. But I I do think the incentives on the provider side, the incentives on the payer side, they do exist. Uh but they're not necessarily well prescribed in a way that is easy for people to understand. >> H okay, fair. Uh what do you think is a specific thing that you'd like to bring to your product that you you don't have right now? >> Ah there's always uh a ton of those pieces. >> Everyone's got a big list familiar. >> You know for us the biggest thing is pushing forward on getting as much real time on the compliance engine side. We've got a good portion of it mapped out. That's been a real good element. But now really taking it the next step of really driving where that can be a core engine of figuring out when to call people

when is the right time to pay contact the patient. Uh that's going to be the next big pieces is managing that whole data side. >> Yep. Fair. And what do you think um just in general you know taking a step back outside of healthcare what are some of the things that you are excited about? I know we talked a lot about concerns. What do you think? What do you think are some of the things you're just genuinely excited about for uh how business is going to be conducted moving forward with AI in the next couple years? >> Well, I I fundamentally I do think there's huge changes in across the board how stuff happens uh whichever industry you're going through it. Uh some of those changes are going to be painful. Some of them I think the other side is much you know much better.

You know example from a software development perspective I see how much quicker we're able to get out first versions of features to validate that we're solving the right problem. Uh I there's a lot of places where I think the time gets wasted resources get wasted waiting to figure out if you've thought solved the problem the right way. And that's part I get most excited, you know, when I look through the tech side is we're now able to iterate on ideas so much faster than we h were able to before. Uh, and you know, from a product development perspective, our product manager that's working with our customers can get a prototype version of it and put it in front of them in hours or days as opposed to having to wait a couple sprints to be able to get development time to build something that is

probably wrong the first time anyway. >> Yeah. No, totally. Um, awesome. Well, I I appreciate uh all the insights and you know, I think we've kind of discussed what you guys do, what what you think about the market, but for kind of a closing statement on a positive note, what is your personal your sorry, your favorite AI for personal use right now? A lot of interesting answers I'm getting on this. Uh, every founder I talk to has a different one. So, what what are you using on it? Um, and if you could try to stray away, I mean, if you really like one of the models, let me know. But if you try to get more niche than just a model tool, I think that would be cool, too. >> Um, that's tricky. So, I still struggle with how to actually balance I I there's

some things that still drive me crazy that hasn't been integrated. I've been a huge chat GP user from the beginning. Uh, and I h it has most of my history and context in it. Uh, Google and Gemini have stepped up quite a bit. I'm finding I I I I often put my biggest challenges in both to see what gets better answers and then whichever one is going the right direction I steer towards and I've ended up going down the Gemini path a lot more lately. >> Gemini is incredible. >> It's Yeah, it's shifted. It's completely different from it was just a little bit of a toy once in a while to now it's actually where I end up more often at the part that frustrates me to no end is still all of these tools integration into my data sets. They nobody really has solved

how to look at my email, how to look at my drive, how to look at my context, how to yeah you know what's the distilled knowledge of record that it actually should be basing decisions off of that. And that's the part that I for the love of God I think they're going to get to soon. Uh and I think you know Microsoft with Office with sort of the Office 365 and Google are kind of in the dominant spot to be able to leverage the integration because it really is how do you access data right side but nobody's got it right yet. >> Yeah. No, that's that's fair. And I uh I really like the multimodal capabilities of Gemini. I actually just created a cool workflow [snorts] um utilizing Gemini that has the ability to like QA video edits which is crazy. Um, it's like insane

to me how because I had come up with I just did another interview right before this and I was acknowledging like models. There's a couple angles I usually go into podcast men around the person that we're working or calling talking to. Um, and there were of a a different type of product where I could imagine model limitation causes some issues. Um, and it was so crazy to me because I had come up with this idea to QA videos uh through video um multimodal capabilities in June, but there was no model in the market yet that could do a good job. And then I saw a stat where Gemini's uh screen understanding and video understanding was like a 77% benchmark and the next highest one was like 20% or 30%. And I was like, "Okay, clearly this is going to be like a big improvement." And

I just took the same thing and in two hours I tweaked the automation, put in the new models, whatever. And then I'm like, my my video editing team's like getting automatic quality assurance based off of a course that I I taught them on how to not only and it's not only like how to do it better or not only how to fix mistakes, it's also like, well, you should probably put this type of thing here to make the edit look nicer. I'm like, holy crap, man. [laughter] I'm like, we're we're really moving forward. So, that's why I like to ask that question. Everyone's got something cool they're working on in this in this realm. So, it's uh it's really exciting to hear what you got going on. >> I'll say the biggest change in the last couple months though has actually been the integration of

speech. Uh I used to have to type all my emails. Uh I'd say 75% of my documents now are transcribed uh using some of the new tools are out there. My favorite one is actually monologue from every they did a great job of integrating into the Mac. Uh yeah, they do a really cute hybrid piece where it's not just speech to text, not just speech transcription. They're running it through uh appsp specific context prompts uh as well as uh effectively using the screen context uh to see everything that's on your screen. So it gets a much better result and it it really is a good multi example of the multi taking all the different modes of in there of what app you're in, what's on your screen and your actual voice and it is an amazing experience for that. It's let me go. >> It

really is. So with uh that being said, could you let everyone know where to go in order to check out what you're doing at Conig? >> Yep. Uh you can take a look at our domain at consig.ai. Uh feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. If you search for RJ Burnham should be pretty easy to find. >> Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on the show, R.J. We appreciate it. Thank you everyone for listening. Make sure to leave a like, review, and don't forget to subscribe to the YouTube channel. That goes for you as well, R.J. Get all those cool updates, review the podcast, get yourself some more listens. We'd really appreciate that, and we really appreciate you for being on the show. So, with that being said, everyone, make sure to go to consig.ai. That's c nsig.ai. Thanks for watching,

and we'll see you in the next one. Peace.