0:03

Hello, Hello, Welcome to Smart Talks with

0:05

IBM, a podcast from Pushkin

0:08

Industries, iHeartRadio and

0:10

IBM. I'm Malcolm Glamwell. This

0:12

season, we're continuing our conversations with

0:14

new creators visionaries who

0:17

are creatively applying technology in business

0:19

to drive change, but with a focus

0:22

on the transformative power of artificial

0:24

intelligence and what it means to leverage

0:26

AI as a game changing multiplier

0:29

for your business. Today's episode

0:32

is a case study of sorts as AI

0:34

expands its reach to different industries.

0:37

The healthcare profession is on the forefront

0:39

of adoption. The integration of

0:42

AI into the healthcare industry is fostering

0:44

a more inclusive and efficient healthcare

0:46

system. Pushkin's very own

0:49

doctor Lori Santos, host of the

0:51

Happiness Lab podcast, sat

0:53

down for a conversation with Alice Creeshy. Alice

0:55

is the co founder and CEO of

0:58

fertility care provider ovum

1:00

Health. Founded in twenty

1:02

twenty three. Ovum Health consists

1:05

of a multi specialty group of board

1:07

certified experts, physicians,

1:10

nutritionness and patient advocates

1:12

who are passionate about helping moms

1:14

to be with prepregnancy, pregnancy

1:18

and postpartum health care. As

1:20

an online platform. They are able to diagnose,

1:22

treat, and manage conditions from

1:25

the comfort of patients homes.

1:28

Alice became an advocate for accessible

1:30

family planning when she was diagnosed

1:32

with breast cancer at age thirty

1:34

one. As a healthcare activist,

1:37

author, cancer and infertility

1:39

survivor, she has dedicated her life

1:41

to improving access to exceptional

1:44

health care, regardless of income,

1:46

insurance, religion, race,

1:49

identity, or location. Alice

1:51

and Laurie discuss the barriers to health care

1:53

access, the ways in which AI can

1:56

be leveraged to expand the reach of health care providers,

1:59

and how else partnership with

2:01

IBM and the use of the IBM Watson

2:03

X Assistant platform has

2:06

been enhancing the patient experience.

2:09

Just a heads up before we dive in. This conversation

2:12

touches on sensitive topics

2:14

such as paternal health and fertility.

2:17

Please take care when listening. Okay,

2:20

let's get to the conversation.

2:24

Alice, thank you so much for joining me. To start

2:26

off, tell me a little bit about your current role.

2:28

Hi, Laurie, thank you so much for having me today.

2:30

I'm thrilled to be here. My current

2:32

role is as co founder and CEO of Ovum

2:34

Health. We are a network of

2:37

fertility telehealth clinics in

2:39

the United States, and really my

2:41

job is to make sure that all the

2:43

people that we want to serve know that we

2:45

exist, and to make sure

2:47

that I create a sustainable company

2:50

so that all the good work that my clinicians are doing

2:52

really reach the millions, truly

2:55

millions of people who need us.

2:57

So, your fertility journey began at thirty one diagnosed

3:00

with cancer. That must have been awful. Tell

3:03

me about the days and weeks surrounding that news and

3:05

what was your life like.

3:06

Yes, the way that I've always described it is that

3:09

the news almost hit the pause button

3:11

on my life. And the

3:14

extraordinary thing was that

3:16

it became my full time job just managing

3:18

all the diagnostic steps involved. So

3:21

truly, for the first thirty days I

3:24

was in a vortex of

3:26

all things cancer related, and

3:28

I was one of the lucky ones. And that a friend

3:31

asked me, are you going to freeze your eggs?

3:33

I would never have even thought to ask about it

3:35

had she not brought it up. I went into

3:37

the fertility clinic, and really

3:40

what was extraordinary is that the day

3:43

before my appointment at the physical clinic,

3:45

I had a telephone console. This

3:47

is before the term telehealth or telemedicine

3:50

was even a thing. Okay, because it was so many years

3:52

ago, she called my phone. There

3:54

was no video conferencing even invented

3:57

yet. So it was five pm on a Tuesday,

4:00

and it was already day two of my

4:02

cycle and she said to

4:04

me, Alice, if you're going to do this, you have

4:06

to start tomorrow morning at seven am. So

4:09

I had less than twenty

4:12

four hours to make the biggest decision

4:14

of my life. And at the time,

4:16

I had a boyfriend who was

4:18

working in the front bedroom of my home. Okay,

4:21

I walk into that room and say, okay,

4:24

I'm all excited. We have to freeze embryos.

4:27

And he looked at me and he goes, we're

4:29

not going to do that. And

4:31

I said, what do you mean, we're not going to do that? He said, no, I'm

4:33

not going to do that with you. I said, why wouldn't

4:36

you do that with me? And he told me then

4:38

that he didn't think we had a future together.

4:41

And in

4:43

that moment I was on

4:46

my own. So when I walked into

4:48

the Fergility clinic the next morning, they

4:50

handed me a catalog of sperm donors

4:53

so can you imagine. Okay, I'm already dealing

4:55

with cancer, completely overwhelmed, and

4:57

I get handed a catalog of

4:59

sperm donor and it was all these statistics.

5:01

So it looked like I was picking

5:04

a basketball team and being like, who do

5:06

I think is going to be MVP this year? And

5:09

I had a friend with me at the appointment who said,

5:11

no, I think this is going to be so much fun. And I handed the catalog

5:14

to her and I was like, great, you pick. So part

5:16

of the journey was such a massive learning

5:19

curve so fast, but

5:21

going through fertility preservation helped

5:23

me focus on life after cancer. So

5:26

I always fundamentally deeply believed

5:28

I'm going to get through this cancer, but I

5:30

also knew I wanted to live the life

5:32

I imagined afterwards, and

5:34

that whole experience started that journey

5:37

what is life going to look like after I get through

5:39

all this trauma? But for

5:41

me, I felt the fertility preservation

5:43

experience was incredibly life affirming.

5:47

You know, I loved the self injections

5:49

because it felt like I finally was doing something

5:51

for my life rather than having

5:53

the medical community do something to

5:56

me.

5:57

And so talk about how that experience led you to the founding

5:59

of Fertile Action and med Answers Well.

6:02

I literally walked out of the fertility clinic

6:05

that same day. The

6:07

business manager had handed me kind

6:09

of like pushed a piece of paper across

6:11

her desk to show me how expensive the treatment

6:13

was going to be. It was a twenty thousand

6:16

dollars expense, and I,

6:18

you know, almost flipped out. I thought, Wow, am I going to do this?

6:21

And you could see the look on her face. She almost felt

6:23

devastated that in my time of need,

6:26

she couldn't just give this to me. My

6:29

friend Gen was on the phone with the

6:31

only nonprofit that existed at the time,

6:33

who basically was telling her I don't qualify.

6:37

I meanwhile, was on the phone with my American Express

6:39

card getting an increased limit. So

6:41

that moment was the gate first game changer, because

6:44

I walked out of the office and I looked at my friend Jen

6:46

and I said, we're going to start a nonprofit. We're going

6:48

to fix this. I felt offended that

6:50

there would be a financial criteria

6:53

to determine who gets help and who doesn't.

6:56

I think you're thirty one years old,

6:58

you're at the prime of your career. You're still

7:01

climbing the ladder. You haven't made it. I barely

7:03

had enough years to put into a

7:05

four oh one k or an ira. I don't have

7:07

a nest egg.

7:08

You know.

7:08

This was not something that I felt like

7:11

we needed to make people prove that

7:13

they have financial need. The cancer is

7:15

the need, and I was offended

7:18

that insurance didn't cover it. And

7:20

insurance was willing to cover a wig, they

7:22

were willing to cover reconstructive breasts,

7:25

and so it seemed that society was telling me it's

7:28

more important to us that you look like a woman when

7:30

you're done with this than actually

7:32

produce offspring like a woman.

7:35

I was really disturbed by that. So

7:37

that was the first pivotal moment of

7:39

starting a charity, was

7:41

because I wanted to educate. I wanted

7:44

to advocate, and.

7:46

So talk about how that passion ultimately evolved

7:48

into the launch of oval Health in twenty twenty

7:50

three.

7:51

Well, what ended up happening is I was doing

7:53

all this advocacy work and all this legislative

7:56

change, and I was educating all

7:58

up and down California. But

8:00

I also was witnessing the spread of misinformation

8:02

on Facebook groups. At the time,

8:04

I knew a lot of clinicians and I had

8:07

them on text and so these women were

8:09

asking questions on these groups and I was

8:11

able to get an answer within fifteen minutes from

8:13

my professional network. So I thought,

8:15

okay, well, there's got to be a better way to do this.

8:18

So with my business partner, the

8:21

illustrious doctor Santiago Munet, who's a world

8:23

renowned reproductive geneticist and researcher,

8:26

I emailed him and I said, we got to do something

8:28

about this. There's got to be a digital way

8:31

to let everyone have access to the people that he and

8:33

I know, and they should

8:35

be able to ask questions in a

8:38

safe, protected environment by actual

8:40

experts, not their peers pretending

8:43

to be an expert. We all have that person

8:46

who's like, well, I had this experience and is

8:48

therefore my experience pertains to your experience

8:50

and it's just not personalized at all. So

8:52

I thought, with technology where it's at, there's no reason

8:55

not to create an app that can connect

8:57

the public with a trusted network

8:59

of professess That was the

9:01

first thing that we did and we

9:03

ran that for years. So we have over ninety

9:06

thousand pieces of clinically validated

9:08

content. Multidisciplinary

9:10

specialists who have answered patient questions

9:13

as volunteers, which is extraordinary.

9:16

But what we saw in the data, because we collected

9:18

so much health information on our users, we

9:21

saw that they weren't being diagnosed with infertility

9:24

yet they had been infertile for more than three

9:26

years. And because

9:28

they weren't diagnosed with infertility, they also

9:30

weren't being diagnosed with the underlying conditions

9:33

causing infertility. So

9:35

to me, infertility is a frustrating diagnosis

9:37

because it's based on time. It's not

9:39

based on labs, it's not based on imaging,

9:42

it's not based on anything except you don't

9:44

have the outcome that you want in the timeframe

9:47

that the professional societies has deemed

9:50

relevant. If you're under the age of thirty

9:52

five and haven't gotten pregnant the old fashioned

9:54

way in a year, you have a disease

9:56

diagnosis of infertility. The

9:58

medical community wasn't telling women that

10:01

in the same way that I had someone call me and say, I'm

10:03

sorry to break the bad news you have

10:05

breast cancer. If

10:07

we don't know that somebody has infertility,

10:09

then they're not looking at the underlying cause. So

10:12

you have women who are trying to figure out what's

10:14

going on and they're turning to Facebook

10:16

groups, or they're turning to other online communities.

10:19

They're trying to take this

10:21

supplement that supplement, but they're

10:23

not really going through a proper diagnostic

10:26

journey, and we wanted to solve

10:28

that. So ob guindes,

10:31

even though we think of them as the ones that deliver

10:33

the babies, they're actually not trained infertility.

10:36

They're not trained in diagnostics

10:39

for infertility, and they're not trained in optimizing

10:41

fertility. And then you have the IVF

10:43

doctors that are the most extreme

10:46

treatment possible that

10:49

has helped millions of babies be born

10:51

worldwide and is a wonderful treatment,

10:53

but it doesn't need to be the first line of treatment.

10:56

There are so many conditions

10:59

that can actually be treated to

11:02

help restore natural fecundity,

11:04

meaning someone's ability to ovulate on their

11:06

own at the right time of the month,

11:08

to ensure that the size of the egg is optimal,

11:11

to ensure that the timing of the egg release

11:13

is optimal, and to ensure that

11:15

sperm has the best possible chance

11:18

of getting to the egg for a fertilization event

11:20

to happen. When you look at

11:22

all the optimization steps that are possible,

11:25

it's a miracle that anybody gets pregnant

11:27

on their own. Okay, it really is.

11:29

And I think we're all raised with the idea

11:32

that when we want to have a baby, we think

11:34

it's going to be easy and it's going to be fine. Because we've

11:36

spent all of our lives telling young people

11:38

how not to get pregnant, that we

11:40

make it seem like they're going to look at a man and get pregnant,

11:43

and that's just not what's so we

11:46

can help same sex couples optimize

11:49

their attempt as well, and that

11:51

is both on the male side and on the female side.

11:54

So really, Ovumhealth was created

11:57

to solve a huge gap that

11:59

exists, and it's not just in the United States, it's

12:01

worldwide between

12:03

an OBEGI and an IVF doctor, so that we

12:05

can get all those diagnostics done and then

12:08

we can do medical nutrition therapy

12:10

first to start optimizing each step of

12:12

the fertility process and then

12:14

use pharmaceutical solutions

12:17

to kind of take over the cycle ovulatory

12:20

experience to make sure that we

12:22

are helping to craft the

12:24

most effective and efficient time

12:27

to intercourse cycle possible.

12:29

So your situation was just so awful

12:31

right where you had to pay for your treatment on an MX

12:34

card. I'm curious what the current state of

12:36

access is for family building treatments in the US.

12:38

Is there's still this higher socioeconomic barrier

12:40

for fertility treatment compared to other health issues.

12:43

Sure, there definitely is, and

12:45

it varies widely. So with ovum Health,

12:48

we are practicing medicine

12:50

in a lane that's covered by insurance.

12:53

We're not doing anything that falls

12:55

outside of your normal

12:58

kind of consultative approach to accessing

13:00

specialty care. Because of this,

13:02

we're covered by insurance. There

13:04

are some innovative testing platforms

13:08

that are not covered by insurance, so

13:10

we work with our patients to help them with

13:12

all their out of pocket expenses. We

13:14

do offer financing in house. We

13:17

offer payment plans. We

13:19

try to be as flexible as possible to make

13:21

sure that there is no socioeconomic

13:24

barrier. I have one hundred and seventy six

13:26

insurance contracts as of today in

13:28

eight states. I intend to be in all

13:30

fifty states by the end of next year with insurance

13:32

contracts. My hunches will have over six

13:35

hundred contracts that includes

13:37

Medicaid, So there are plenty of things

13:39

that Medicaid pays for and it's not just our ability

13:41

to help someone have a healthy pregnancy,

13:44

it's our ability to help someone have a healthy baby,

13:47

and that means that we have to support women through

13:49

the reproductive continuum. So what

13:51

ovum is really creating is being the

13:53

glue at kind of every step of that

13:55

experience for a woman in

13:58

the IVF setting. Yes,

14:00

there are still huge gaps in coverage.

14:02

There are a lot of programs out there, like Carrot

14:04

and Progeny that have targeted

14:07

large employer market as a

14:09

specialty insurance product. Only

14:11

point three percent of reproductive age

14:14

people work for large employers, So

14:16

it's really important that we still access

14:19

IVF coverage through your

14:22

basic health insurance plans like the

14:24

etna's and the Blues and the United Healthcares.

14:28

That's where you still have coverage gap, and

14:31

so much of that is dependent on

14:33

who your employer coverage is through, and so

14:35

much of that is if you're self insured or if you're

14:37

on Medicaid, et cetera. So Medicaid

14:39

currently doesn't cover infertility

14:41

services, and Medicaid pays

14:44

for about half of the pregnancies

14:46

and live births in America. So

14:48

we have to start thinking more broadly about

14:51

treatment options.

14:53

And so walk us through a typical patient

14:55

journey with ovumhealth from first contact

14:57

to final outcome. What are all the ways that OVAM helps

14:59

them build a.

14:59

Fan Yes, that's

15:01

a great question. So really the first

15:03

thing that we're looking at is a diagnostic

15:06

journey that we want to get people

15:08

through rapidly. So in a traditional

15:10

healthcare environment, if you have

15:12

to see the number of specialists that are under

15:14

one roof at ovum, it probably

15:16

would take you six months to see all

15:19

of them, and you'd have six

15:22

to twelve different appointments because

15:24

that's how many specialists we're bringing onto

15:26

your case. So you initially meet

15:28

with our nurse practitioner to review your

15:30

medical history. We do ask you to

15:32

fill out quite a bit of data because we

15:34

want it to be again as efficient as possible

15:37

for you. We don't want to waste your time. We

15:39

want to make sure that we are well prepared to

15:42

be able to ask all the follow up questions

15:44

and review that medical history so

15:46

that we can turn around and order your lab

15:48

work right away. So typically when

15:50

someone calls in to us, we actually book four appointments

15:53

for them at once so that they don't

15:55

have any delays. We book that

15:57

first visit, we book the lab appointment for

15:59

them their local lab. After the

16:01

lab visit, then our patients get

16:03

to meet with the lead clinician on their case

16:06

and that's usually when they get an initial diagnosis

16:09

from the lab work and the history

16:11

that we reviewed. At that point,

16:13

then we probably need to send them for imaging.

16:16

We need to do fallopian two evaluation,

16:18

uterine evaluation, and ovaryanvaluation,

16:21

and they then get paired with a nurse

16:24

navigator. That nurse navigator's

16:26

job is to help them understand

16:28

what their treatment options are going to be.

16:31

The doctor had already reviewed the treatment options.

16:33

However, as we all know, we

16:36

are trying to take in as much information as we can

16:38

in that doctor visit. And then as soon as we get in the car,

16:40

as soon as we get off the phone, we think of thirty

16:42

questions to ask, so we pair

16:44

them with a nurse navigator so that they have somebody

16:47

to ask all those follow up questions efficiently.

16:50

At that point, then we lay out kind of what

16:52

the next three to four months of their life is going to look

16:54

like. In all cases, we assign

16:56

them a registered dietitian, so they have

16:59

a nurse navigator that is the

17:01

glue of their case and helping to facilitate

17:03

every next step. They're assigned a registered

17:05

dietitian, and they even get a patient advocate

17:08

who's kind of advocating for their insurance,

17:10

helping them understand what else

17:12

they need where they need to order it. It could be a

17:15

custom supplement list, it could be an at home

17:17

continuous hormone monitoring kit, it

17:19

could be their molecular sperm testing kit for

17:21

their partner as well. So we

17:24

line up kind of the diagnostic journey

17:26

first, but in a lot of cases,

17:28

we're already starting some medical nutrition therapy

17:31

or medicateid weight loss, or working

17:34

with the registered dietitian even alongside

17:36

some of the other steps because we have some of the diagnoses

17:39

already. We know people who are insulin

17:41

resistant, so we know what kind of diet plan we need

17:43

to help them with. We know the lifestyle changes

17:46

we need to pair them with. We're even adding

17:48

PT into our practice so that we can

17:50

customize exercise plans specific

17:52

to somebody's condition.

17:54

But opal health is also launching during this pivotal

17:56

moment in AI, and so I'm curious, was

17:58

it always the plan to lie reached this technology

18:01

for ovum or was it more of an organic evolution

18:03

to this point.

18:04

It was both. It was always

18:07

my intention that we needed to have AI

18:09

enabled technology to be

18:12

able to scale faster and to

18:14

also be able to improve quality

18:17

control across so many states,

18:19

because how do you really do that. I

18:21

need to upscale all different levels

18:24

of healthcare providers, then how

18:26

do we efficiently kind of manage

18:29

that clinical excellence experience? And

18:31

the only way to really do that is to create clinical

18:33

decisions support tools that everybody

18:36

utilizes that are very easy to make sure

18:38

that we're managing our care in

18:41

a consistent fashion. How else could

18:43

we possibly do it? State by state?

18:45

You know, experience level varies.

18:48

So that was always kind of the plan.

18:51

The area that I didn't even know was possible

18:54

was this area of being able to reach

18:56

the masses truly through an AI

18:58

tool through the fertility and app. So

19:01

when IBM approached me for that partnership,

19:04

the bells went off. I always knew that

19:06

I couldn't scale voluntary

19:08

humans. I have a network

19:10

of over four hundred medical professionals

19:13

across so many disciplines. We're talking

19:15

mds, genetic counselors,

19:17

geneticists, psychologists, obigids,

19:21

naturopaths, functional medicine docs.

19:23

I have about thirteen different specialties,

19:26

all willing to answer

19:28

free questions. But relying

19:30

on that voluntary basis is

19:32

not something that can scale. It's

19:35

a beautiful thing that they're doing and

19:37

it's created ninety thousand pieces

19:40

of clinically validated content, but

19:42

we needed to move beyond kind of

19:45

the initial interaction being a human

19:47

answering the question and leverage AI

19:49

to be able to do that. So what

19:52

was really extraordinary for me is that I

19:54

had my eyes kind of opened

19:57

by IBM to see what was

19:59

possible for from my practice with AI.

20:02

Once that seed was planted,

20:04

then the world opened up. We

20:07

have four tools that we're working on right

20:09

now. The first has already been integrated,

20:11

which is the Fertility Answers App. So

20:13

the initial experience for women

20:16

and mostly women, because they're the ones download

20:18

the app, but we take men. I promise we're

20:20

not excluding them. We see both. It takes

20:22

two and they have

20:25

the opportunity to access all that content

20:27

in a personalized way through the IBM

20:30

Watson Assistant chatbot, so

20:32

that is incredible. We're also

20:34

deploying a revenue cycle management tool.

20:37

You can imagine with all these different

20:39

contracts that I have one

20:41

hundred and seventy six contracts and eventually I'll have

20:43

probably six hundred contracts. They

20:46

all have different price lists. Makes

20:48

it very difficult to forecast

20:50

what's in my electronic medical record

20:53

system for that day based on

20:55

the type of insurance. Now, even

20:57

within one insurance contract, they might have

20:59

hundred of insurance plans that

21:02

have all various mechanisms

21:05

for what we can expect to build.

21:07

You might have co insurance, you might have a deductible,

21:10

you might have a copey and it varies

21:12

planned to plan. We're dealing

21:15

with a level of medical literacy in this country

21:17

that is very low, and the

21:20

layperson doesn't understand

21:22

their insurance all the time. How

21:25

am I expected to be able to deal

21:27

with truly thousands of combinations

21:29

of insurance plans based on these contracts.

21:32

You have to have AI just to tackle that

21:34

big data issue. So we have

21:36

a revenue cycle management tool that is also helping

21:39

us with an automated clinical workflow,

21:41

and that's with a wonderful partner we have called

21:43

cloud Astra, who is also in the IBM

21:45

ecosystem. So it's incredibly

21:48

exciting to know that I can come

21:51

out of a startup mode profitably

21:54

because we're deploying smart tools from

21:56

the beginning. Then

21:59

we also have in delopment our Fertility

22:01

Clinical Decision Support tool to

22:03

really scale the clinical experience

22:06

so that we're analyzing genomic

22:08

data, lab data, clinical data,

22:10

and even self reported data from

22:12

our users in a way that helps

22:15

our clinicians know what to do next.

22:17

And that's all based on standard of care guidelines,

22:20

all evidence based medicine, but built into

22:22

a really useful tool to help

22:24

them do their job more efficiently. Recently,

22:28

the International Guidelines for PCOS

22:30

polycystic Ovarian Syndrome updated

22:33

guidelines. There were two hundred

22:35

individual points in these guidelines. Two

22:38

hundred and that's for one condition, So

22:41

imagine you multiply that across

22:44

dozens of conditions. You

22:46

can't expect a human to retain that information

22:49

and to be able to recall it right

22:51

when someone's in front of them. So tools

22:54

that have IBMS AI enabled

22:57

are really critical to do an exceptional job

22:59

in healthcare. And then the fourth tool

23:01

that we're creating with IBM is a medical

23:04

nutrition therapy tool so that we

23:06

can scale beyond our registered

23:08

dietitians and be able to help

23:10

women really optimize their

23:12

fertility, health and wellness by

23:14

having personalized approach to medical

23:17

nutrition therapy, and that also requires

23:19

AI.

23:20

So when you decided to go big and introduce AI

23:22

in so many different ways to scale up your app

23:24

and your business more broadly, why

23:26

did you pick IBM as a partner?

23:28

IBM was an easy yes when we were

23:30

approached about this partnership for so many reasons.

23:33

I'm not an AI startup, I'm

23:36

a healthcare startup, and it's

23:38

very important that I don't waste resources

23:40

trying to figure out AI all by ourselves.

23:43

We needed to be very fast to market

23:46

and needed to be with a trusted partner. IBM

23:49

brought that to the team right away. But

23:51

secondarily, the IBM team that I've

23:53

been exposed to is incredible.

23:57

So from a partnership standpoint, the

23:59

team has made it easy, joyful.

24:02

There's some of the smartest people that

24:05

I've had the pleasure to work with, and

24:07

so I think the culture of what IBMS

24:09

created for startups is very unique

24:11

and truly every single aspect

24:14

of the team that I've worked with, from the

24:16

developers themselves that build labs,

24:18

to the customer success team

24:21

to my day to day team. I mean, my

24:23

goodness, it is just a dream team.

24:26

So IBM made it as easy as possible

24:28

for me to say yes.

24:30

Alice really helped open my eyes to the challenges

24:33

facing providers in an industry

24:35

as sensitive and individualized

24:37

as fertility care. It makes sense

24:40

that scalability would be an issue, but

24:42

with the help of AI, ovum

24:44

Health has been able to solve a few

24:46

of the extraordinary challenges of

24:49

bringing effective, affordable fertility

24:51

care to the general public, from

24:54

multiplying the impact of its medical professional

24:56

network to enabling more accurate

24:58

forecasting of complex contracts.

25:01

Patients are benefiting directly

25:04

and indirectly from the integration

25:06

of AI across the healthcare

25:08

journey.

25:10

A lot of people have nuanced health questions that are unique

25:12

to them due to their own personal health history,

25:15

maybe their lifestyle factors, or the specific

25:17

medications they're taking. How does the

25:19

Fertility Answers bot personalize all its

25:21

responses.

25:23

Yeah, that's a great question. So when we onboard our

25:25

users, we do ask them to fill out quite

25:27

a bit of health information, and we

25:29

have ninety nine percent compliance

25:31

rates on the health information that people fill

25:34

out. So when you ask

25:36

a question, you're asking

25:38

it with all your health information already attached

25:41

to it. The library of responses

25:43

then shows you questions

25:46

and answers of people who are similar

25:48

to you. If that

25:51

doesn't answer your question, you still have a

25:53

chance to route your question to the

25:55

same volunteer network of professionals that

25:57

existed before the bot was there.

26:00

And so some problems, especially those related to

26:02

fertility and needle care, require human

26:04

to human connection, right This is what we're built for. Is

26:06

primates to kind of engage with our families

26:09

as the chatbot addresses such a personal

26:11

health need. How easy is it for a doctor to

26:13

interject or for a patient to request care

26:15

from a doctor?

26:16

Very easy, and that was super important to me. One

26:19

of the things that I love the most out

26:22

of IBM was that I

26:24

had the chance to infuse

26:26

empathy directly into the bought

26:28

experience. I didn't want something that

26:30

sounded or came off as robotic, but

26:33

it is incredibly easy and the Watson Assistant

26:35

flow for someone to request that

26:38

immediate human connection. We have

26:40

a chat feature that gets to a patient

26:42

advocate right away. We have a

26:44

feature where they can route their question to that network

26:47

of experts right away, and we have a

26:49

feature where they can book a console with one

26:51

of our medical professionals right away as well.

26:53

So you have over sixty seven thousand

26:55

users now, which is kind of amazing. How

26:58

do you get them to feel the kind of trust and empathy

27:00

people expect from their healthcare provider, especially

27:02

in the fertility space.

27:04

In our case, we have a very human

27:06

brand, so from the moment that someone interacts

27:09

with our content, they're already

27:11

experiencing clinically validated

27:13

answers in the form of video. We

27:16

don't ask people to download and register our app

27:19

upon the first touch point. We are

27:21

infusing medical education

27:24

into the community through

27:26

video so that they can start

27:29

to build that brand trust with us

27:31

from the beginning. What I've noticed

27:33

is that because our brand is such human

27:35

connection, we've built up so much trusts.

27:38

And it's not just about the app experience.

27:40

It's also how active our Instagram is,

27:43

where we answer live questions for

27:45

people in Instagram lives, so

27:48

there's multiple ways for people to get

27:51

served for virtually

27:53

free and an unlimited fashion.

27:56

We've vetted all the providers for them so they

27:58

don't have to do that. So I think that there's

28:01

multiple things that go into building brand trust,

28:03

and that's why we show sort

28:05

of the profile of someone

28:07

who asked a similar question already so that

28:09

they can find themselves in that Oh wow,

28:12

that person who asks my similar question

28:14

or almost my exact same question also

28:17

is thirty seven years old, or also

28:20

has PCOS or also has ENDO.

28:22

So there are different ways that we are able

28:25

to kind of get into the psychology

28:27

of our community to make sure that they feel

28:29

heard. And I think whenever anybody

28:31

feels truly heard, then that trust

28:34

is possible.

28:36

So this season of Smart Talks features new

28:38

creators, visionaries like you who are creatively

28:41

applying technology in business to drive change.

28:43

I know that you have a Bachelor of Science in Media,

28:46

Arts and Design. How does this creative

28:48

background inform what you do? Is CEO of Overmhealth.

28:51

Oh, that's such a great question. That

28:53

use my degree every single day and

28:56

I'm not a spring chicken, so I've had that degree

28:58

for quite a while, Lorie. Every

29:02

CEO has kind of a I

29:04

would say leading skill set. You

29:06

know, there are some that are leading financial

29:09

type people. There's some that are leading kind

29:11

of business to business salespeople.

29:13

I am very much a leading marketing

29:16

type CEO. So for me, the

29:18

patient experience, the user experience. That human

29:21

experience is kind of everything that I stand

29:23

for and I'm about, and it must be authentic.

29:26

And because of the background that I have, I

29:28

love nothing more than co producing

29:31

with my chief storyteller, Joshua

29:33

Noonan, who's been with me forever. We

29:36

love co producing content. It could

29:38

be a twenty two second video that that's educational,

29:41

it could be an hour long course, you

29:43

know, for professionals. And so

29:46

I do feel that I bring that

29:48

media, arts and design background to kind of my

29:50

type of leadership, and storytelling

29:53

is kind of everything.

29:55

You know.

29:56

Being a great storyteller, no matter what

29:58

your brand is or no matter the type of leader

30:00

you are, is the way that kind of attracts

30:02

and connects people to us. And

30:05

it's fortunate that social media has

30:07

created this visual world

30:09

that we live in and this video based world

30:11

that we live in as well.

30:13

So you're an activist for accessibility and inclusivity

30:15

and healthcare. If you could look years

30:17

down the line, how do you see creative applications

30:20

of technology like fertility answers changing

30:22

how we talk about women's health.

30:24

Well, first, I think that these tools need

30:26

to be covered by insurance. So I

30:28

think what is going to be the game changer

30:30

in the value based care market, is that

30:33

insurance is going to figure out that

30:35

by creating a reimbursement mechanism

30:38

for more digital therapeutics, but also

30:40

for digital diagnostic tools, is

30:43

going to lead to a much more cost

30:46

effective healthcare society no

30:48

matter what kind of insurance type or plan

30:50

that we have. So on the accessibility

30:52

side, those tools are really

30:55

meaningful to the future of healthcare. I

30:58

would also say that technology creates

31:00

a more democratized healthcare environment.

31:03

A lot of our patients live four hours

31:05

from a type of specialist that they need

31:08

four hours, you know, a lot of them are

31:10

at least an hour an hour and a half from a

31:12

major lab. So leveraging

31:14

these types of tools gets them the answers

31:17

that they need faster, which will lead

31:19

to better intervention earlier. And

31:22

that's where we come down to. Healthy mamas,

31:24

healthy babies, make happy families.

31:26

Awesome.

31:27

That's a great way to end. Thank you Alis so much

31:29

for being with us on smart Talks today.

31:31

It is such great work that you were doing to help women

31:33

in families, So thank you for all your work and thanks

31:35

for our chat today.

31:37

Thank you, Laurie. It's such an honor to get to be on

31:39

Smart Talks, and it was a delightful conversation.

31:46

That about wraps up today's episode. I

31:48

want to send a huge thank you to Laurie and

31:50

Alice for deepening the way I think

31:52

about AI's expanding role

31:55

in the future of healthcare. It

31:57

was illuminating to hear a first

31:59

hand of care of how providers are

32:01

already integrating the power of transparent,

32:04

human centric generative AI

32:07

through Watson X. It's enabling

32:10

telehealth platforms to multiply

32:12

their impact and is quickly becoming

32:14

essential to offering comprehensive

32:16

care to patients. As

32:18

our conversation with Laurie and Alice showed, accessibility

32:22

has long been an issue facing patients,

32:24

particularly in the fertility space.

32:27

With the help of technology from IBM, Overumhealth

32:30

is meaningfully expanding its reach

32:32

to women who previously may not have

32:34

been able to access personalized

32:36

fertility care. Steps like these

32:39

are helping to usher in a new age in

32:41

healthcare, one that holds incredible

32:43

potential for both patients

32:46

and providers. Yet, as new technology

32:48

is implemented, it needs to be done

32:50

with responsibility and care. Using

32:53

emerging technologies in sensitive

32:55

feels like fertility has the power

32:57

to transform how people receive care,

33:00

but, as Alice emphasized,

33:03

only if patient needs are

33:05

central to how we implement solutions.

33:09

Ovum Health already has over

33:11

sixty seven thousand users. Just

33:14

think of all the pregnancies that have been

33:16

supported by the platform. And as

33:18

we just heard, this is only the beginning.

33:21

It's exciting to see how this new technology

33:24

will continue to reach people in need. Smart

33:27

Talks with IBM is produced by Matt

33:29

Romano, Joey fish Ground and

33:31

Jacob Goldstein. We're edited by

33:33

Lydia Jane Kott. Our engineers are

33:35

Jason Gambrel, Sarah Bruguier, and

33:38

Ben Tolliday. Theme song

33:40

by Gramoscope. Special thanks

33:43

to Andy Kelly, Kathy Callahan

33:45

and the eight Bar and IBM teams,

33:47

as well as the Pushkin marketing team.

33:50

Smart Talks with IBM is a production of

33:52

Pushkin Industries and Ruby Studio

33:55

at iHeartMedia. To find more

33:57

Pushkin podcasts, listen on the

33:59

iheartradi you app, Apple Podcasts,

34:01

or wherever you listen to podcasts.

34:05

I'm Malcolm Glamo