WellSpan Health Launches Conversational AI Tool

The Ana AI tool helps with outbound patient outreach and inbound communication.

WellSpan Health is using an AI tool to improve the health system’s interaction with patients at home.

The Ana AI tool, launched in a partnership with Hippocratic AI, is an innovative approach to engaging patients, according to Mark Kandrysawtz, MBA, SVP and Chief Innovation Officer at the York, Pennsylvania-based health system. He is among nearly a dozen executives participating in the HealthLeaders AI in Clinical Care Mastermind program.

WellSpan's Ana AI model is an AI assistant that takes the form of phone-based conversational AI. The AI tool performs three functions.

• With outbound campaign-style outreach, Ana reaches targeted groups of people to help with things such as colorectal cancer screening. These patients are typically not engaged in the digital self-service tools that WellSpan has already deployed.
   
• With outbound integrated use cases, the health system embeds outbound outreach as a fully integrated and automatic part of care experiences. For example, when patients have a normal mammogram and do not respond to the health system's self-service messaging and notifications to get their test results, Ana makes sure people know that they had a normal result. Ana will automatically call those people who have not reviewed their test results and engage them in conversation.
   
• With inbound communication, Ana answers the phone on the first ring for primary care practices. The AI tool performs call routing and can help answer questions. In June, Ana will be able to dynamically schedule visits.

Across the use cases and touchpoints, Ana has memory, according to Kandrysawtz.

"When you have a conversation with Ana, who is empathetic and friendly with infinite patience and time, if you share details about your life such as having grandchildren, she will bring up these details the next time you talk with her to provide a personalized relationship," he says.

The health system is seeing success scaling the technology as well.

"Prior to March, we had done about 6,300 total calls in the innovation mode, where we were experimenting and learning," Kandrysawtz says. "In March, we scaled to more than 260,000 calls and more than 12,000 hours of total call time."

Ana not only speaks several languages but also can change fluidly between languages.

"If she notices that a customer is using mixed English and Spanish, she will offer to change to Spanish if the customer is more comfortable with that language," Kandrysawtz says.

Mark Kandrysawtz, MBA, is SVP and chief innovation officer at WellSpan Health. Photo courtesy of WellSpan Health.

AI tool adoption advice

Kandrysawtz offers two pieces of advice about adopting AI tools.

First, he says transformation is achieved through an experience-based approach.

"You need to identify the problems to solve and the opportunities to pursue," Kandrysawtz says. "You need to consider how to deliver the best experience for team members and customers. In this way, you can unlock the level of transformational thinking that is necessary in healthcare."

Healthcare leadership should take an experience-based design approach to leveraging AI vs. creating an AI-first strategy, according to Kandrysawtz.

"It is a better way to drive transformation in an organization because it considers team members and customers first in the process," he says. "Technology is an enabling factor."

Second, leadership should avoid being overwhelmed when considering the organizational risks associated with AI tool adoption.

"It is important to balance the risk analysis that comes with privacy, security, and reputation with the opportunities for a new frontier of thinking in healthcare," Kandrysawtz says. "Those opportunities include data monetization, co-development and collaboration with solution companies, and recognizing that the healthcare side of the paradigm brings a tremendous amount of ingenuity that we can provide in the creation of the next generation of solutions."

The HealthLeaders Mastermind program is an exclusive series of calls and events with healthcare executives. This Mastermind series features ideas, solutions, and insights on excelling in your AI programs.

To inquire about participating in an upcoming Mastermind series or attending a HealtLeaders Exchange event, email us at exchange@healthleadersmedia.com.