Patient Engagement

Your Valentine, the AI avatar

Sensly is leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to help patients get better care, and the AI avatar is developing a relationship with patients.

Sensly image

In popular culture, artificial intelligence is often portrayed as confident, street-smart and more than a little malevolent – think Ultron, HAL and Skynet. But what if AI’s actual inclinations are kind, helpful and empathetic? What if we can be friends?

That may be one hopeful byproduct of Molly, a virtual medical assistant being developed by San Francisco startup, Sensely, which on Tuesday announced $8 million in series B financing. Founded in 2013, Sensly is leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to help patients get better care. For people with chronic conditions, better health starts with compliance.

“Around 5 percent of the population is responsible for about 50 percent of (healthcare) costs, said Sensely found and CEO Adam Odessky in a phone interview. “We focused on the people who are frequent flyers, who are in and out of the hospital and have a chronic disease, whether that’s heart failure, COPD or diabetes.”

Molly is the cell phone app that really cares. Customized with digitized discharge instructions, she queries patients about how they are feeling and encourages them to comply with their regimen. Let’s take your blood pressure. Let’s get your weight. In addition, Molly collects data from a wide range of Bluetooth-enabled diagnostic devices.

“Based on that five-minute conversation, we can calculate the risk of that patient being readmitted to the hospital,” said Odessky. “We can inform the clinician, so they can do an intervention and keep that patient out of the hospital.”

Early data appears to show the system works. According to a study tracking heart failure patients, patients completed 77 percent of their assigned tasks; operational costs decreased by 70 percent and the hospital readmission rate plunged to 5 percent from the typical 24 percent. This last metric is a big deal for hospitals, which are being penalized by payers for readmissions.

But apparently, there’s more going on. Some patients are developing relationships with Molly.

“We use artificial intelligence to chit chat with the patients,” said Odessky. “We can ask them how they’re doing or tell them a joke. Patients respond to that. They call her baby or honey; they have the sort of human-to-human relationship that can develop with an avatar. I think that ultimately helps with empathy but also compliance rates.”

In some cases, Molly actually elicits more trust than a human would. Patients who might be reticent to share the details of their latest bowel movement to an actual nurse have little trouble with a virtual one.

Molly has drawn interest from both hospitals and insurance companies who want to reduce costs and improve care. She’s also being piloted by Britain’s National Health Service. The UK version has a sexy BBC voice and is named Olivia.

“They don’t have enough caregivers to care for their chronic patients,” said Odessky. “You need these kinds of automated systems to follow up with patients – not just every few weeks but every day.”

Photo: Sensely

Shares0
Shares0