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[Enterprise View] How AI helps Cloudnine better patient care and alleviate anxiety

Cloudnine CDO-CMO talks about the role of AI, understanding expecting and new mothers better and addressing the core emotion of healthcare—anxiety.

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Vaishnavi Desai
New Update
Digitization in Healthcare

“A tech initiative is a continuous journey,” says Chaitanya Shravanth, Chief Digital Officer and Chief Marketing Officer, Cloudnine Group of Hospitals. Chaitanya description comes on the heels of disruption that the healthcare sector is witnessing especially in the aftermath of Covid19.

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With deep technologies making inroads into the sector and influencing operations impacting better treatment and faster diagnosis for the patients, no hospital can be left behind in the endeavour. Chaitanya talks about the role of AI, deriving insights and applying it to better operations and understanding expecting and new mothers better and most importantly addressing the core emotion of healthcare—anxiety.

Role of AI:

One of the primary initiatives that the chain undertook is introducing digital pen for the doctors. Convincing the doctors to use the digital pen for writing the prescription. Artificial intelligence, along with the bots used to infer details from the written prescription.  This ensures that every interaction with the doctor and patient is documented.

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Also, counting on the back of the success of “It’s Our Baby” app, Chaitanya’s team ensured an all-round customer engagement. With most of the customers using the app to make appointments, payments, etc., it is easier to derive insights to make their visit easy. “A chatbot asks few questions pertaining to the patient’s condition and corresponding to the stage they are in the treatment journey. Based on the historic insights and the answers to the questions, the information is accumulated and presented to the doctor in an understandable, readable format,” says Chaitanya.

Chaitanya describes it saves up 60-70% of the time that’s spent in history taking and understanding and now can be dedicated to counselling the patient, answering the anxieties, relationship building, etc.

The role of AI also extends to detecting anomalies that can be caught on radiology scan.

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The doctors have to adhere to a protocol during the scan and maintain a checklist of images to be taken. “The regular AI algorithm reads through the scan and ensures all the images to be taken are present. If the check isn’t complete, we instantly reach out to the customer and ensure the scan is completed and protocol adhered to,” says Chaitanya.

The next level would be to provide guidance to the doctor by spotting anomalies during the scan and advising to spend time checking up on those.

Importance of insights derived:

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Chaitanya plays a dual role with ease at Cloudnine—that of a digital officer and a chief marketing officer. He took over the CMO role two years ago.

The customer base was divided into segments for better understanding of the demographic. Interviews and surveys with various expecting mothers—both within and outside Cloudnine—were carried out. The base was segmented into five categories basis the anxiety scale—one of the core emotions in healthcare. The analysis helped understand the customer better and their preferences—for instance their search for doctors, pain points, shopping preferences for the baby, etc.

The impact, Chaitanya explains has been on the outward communication. Additionally, on the app, it has helped customize the language that works best for a customer belonging to a particular segment. The usage of analytics in that aspect has influenced our engagement with the customer, he says. Also, providing the insights to the operations team, doctors, etc. has helped them understand the customer, navigate their anxieties and treat them better.

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Customer and community engagement:

One of the ways Chaitanya turned the pandemic tide in the group’s favour is by scaling up community engagement. Cloudnine started video consultation late March through an in house-built platform. “It was easier to test and get feedback from the doctors. And laid the foundation for later initiatives.”

With clear outcomes on the horizon, the team made strides into home services through the app—which started off for vaccinations and moved on to lab sample collection, pharma delivery, etc. albeit in the initial stages. Also, the team picked up initiatives addressing anxiety a new mother has. Prior to covid, there were sessions to educate the mother about the entire pregnancy journey, what to expect on delivery day, etc. Now there are full fledged sessions and forums for community to engage, where in the questions of mothers are answered by in-house experts. “The customer engagement on the app went through the roof. Community has scaled up well now,” says Chaitanya.

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The road ahead:

Chaitanya’s team is also working on a platform that analyses the clinical risks that a patient might face. “Within the entire 9 months of clinical engagement, we would be able to predict percentage risk of patient ending up with certain outcomes—for instance gestation diabetes, hypertension, etc. It will be dependent on first three months data, patient history, etc. We could predict that and take actions to prevent that outcome,” he explains.

Talking about other disruption in the healthcare in the near future, Chaitanya says,” Digitization will be through the roof.” Doctors too would be video consultation savvy with increased online presence of the various healthcare chains. Also, specific technologies within the AI spectrum—text to speech, natural language processing, etc.—will have more impact on the sector. Also, precision medicine will make in roads on the back of wearable tech, IoT, etc.

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