Daniel Cane is co-CEO and cofounder of South Florida-based ModMed®, a healthcare IT firm that’s reworking healthcare by means of specialty-specific, clever platforms to extend observe effectivity and enhance affected person outcomes.
Based in February 2010, ModMed has grown to over 1,200 workers and has raised over $332 million in complete funding. Recognized for its progressive progress as a medical know-how firm, ModMed is steadily acknowledged each nationally and regionally for its achievements below Daniel’s management. In 2020, the corporate was named one of many Finest Workplaces within the Nation by Inc. journal. Between 2016 and 2018, the corporate was named one of many fastest-growing firms in North America on the Deloitte Know-how Quick 500™ record. Beginning in 2015, the corporate has been named yearly to the unique Inc. 5000 record, a prestigious compilation of the fastest-growing personal firms within the nation.
Are you able to share some insights into your background and the way it has influenced your work at ModMed?
My journey into tech started throughout my undergraduate years at Cornell once I co-founded Blackboard. We reworked schooling by digitizing class notes and making a platform that gave college students and school unprecedented flexibility and interplay. For me, Blackboard’s success culminated in 2004 with its IPO, and whereas our options have been game-changing in edTech, I couldn’t assist however preserve an eye fixed out for brand new challenges.
One such problem offered itself once I went for a routine checkup with my dermatologist. We had an unbelievable speak concerning the struggles of utilizing outdated paper-based techniques and methods to repair them. Realizing the bridge between his medical experience and my technical know-how, we determined to workforce up and create ModMed together with our first digital well being document (EHR) platform.
On the time, some EHRs already existed, however sadly, research typically cited them as one of many main causes of doctor burnout. We took a unique strategy and designed our EHR to adapt the consumer expertise to the particular workflows of a medical specialty. Our flagship cloud-based EHR, EMA, is and continues to be designed by docs, for docs, which has set us aside and defines our secret sauce available in the market. Over time, we’ve expanded our product choices to incorporate a full suite of options that assist medical suppliers simplify and streamline their observe operations and expedite the supply of care.
How do you see the battle for efficient AI in healthcare being received or misplaced with information?
We’re beginning to see an increase within the adoption of AI know-how inside practices to streamline workflows and maximize effectivity. As we transfer into an period of utilizing AI to do extra refined duties – reminiscent of suggesting remedy or different clinical-support suggestions – it’s paramount to have the best information and AI coaching technique in place. AI has the chance to considerably enhance the expertise for sufferers and suppliers and create systemic change that can actually enhance healthcare, however making this a actuality will depend on giant quantities of high-quality information used to coach the fashions.
Why is information so vital for AI improvement within the healthcare business?
Knowledge is the lifeblood of AI, and poor information high quality will impair an AI’s efficiency, resulting in suboptimal outcomes. This may have dire penalties in a healthcare setting as affected person lives could also be at stake. However a extra doubtless state of affairs is that these destructive experiences may undermine each sufferers’ and suppliers’ belief in AI, slowing down progress and the constructive influence this revolutionary know-how can have on healthcare.
For instance, within the examination room, AI-enabled ambient listening instruments are designed to counsel content material for medical notes for the supplier to evaluate and approve. Ideally, this could scale back the period of time a supplier spends documenting inside the EHR and permit for extra high quality time with the affected person. Nonetheless, poor information sourcing and ill-trained AI instruments may have the other impact, leaving suppliers to as a substitute spend an inordinate period of time fixing errors and re-writing notes.
Moreover, bias is a major danger related to AI algorithms, and high quality information can play a key position in mitigating healthcare disparities. AI fashions can study patterns that successfully deal with one affected person inhabitants preferentially in comparison with different populations, together with legally protected teams. By monitoring the information inputs and coaching on sturdy and consultant information, AI outputs will be extra inclusive and correct.
Are you able to elaborate on the kinds of information ModMed makes use of to coach its AI fashions and the way this information is sourced and managed?
At ModMed, we use complete specialty-specific information to assist prepare our AI fashions with precision. During the last 14 years, we’ve created specialty-specific, de-identified structured information units in keeping with privateness legal guidelines and at the moment are leveraging this in-house information to coach our AI fashions. For instance, our ambient listening instrument ModMed Scribe has been educated for dermatology, our first specialty launch, on thousands and thousands of structured parameters from de-identified affected person information sampled from a set of 500 million affected person encounters.
How does ModMed outline “moral AI” within the context of healthcare?
The potential for AI to have biases or present inaccurate data within the type of “hallucinations” or omissions can influence affected person lives. Because of this, moral AI in healthcare is about setting a excessive commonplace for accuracy and precision. It means creating algorithms fastidiously and responsibly and utilizing high-quality and numerous information to assist allow extra correct predictions for each consumer.
Moral AI can be about guaranteeing that people stay within the equation. An AI shouldn’t “out physician the physician” however as a substitute scale back the executive burden physicians and their workers expertise to allow them to focus extra on serving to sufferers.
What measures are in place at ModMed to permit AI applied sciences to be developed and deployed ethically?
Our structured information strategy—curating high-quality, consultant coaching information units—helps us make accountable AI a actuality. Related and de-identified information collected from our EHR techniques from all kinds of practices offers us with a various set of coaching information that displays completely different affected person populations.
Moreover, our improvement workforce embraces information cleansing to facilitate gathering and using high-quality information. This course of permits our groups to establish, rectify, and take away inconsistencies, errors, and lacking values from the information set. By this common upkeep, we will persistently replace the AI based mostly on efficiency information, particularly medical information, the place affected person outcomes will be impacted.
Are you able to talk about the significance of transparency and accountability in AI improvement, particularly in healthcare?
Transparency makes accountability potential, which is why it is such an important underpinning to any AI answer in healthcare. Physicians’ high priorities are affected person care and security, so it is no shock that 80% of physicians wish to know the traits and options of the design, improvement, and deployment of AI instruments.
Moreover, not all information is created equal. It is necessary to know the place and the way information is saved and sourced and the way frequently it’s up to date. We’re lucky that since ModMed’s inception, now we have been dedicated to an information technique that prioritizes transparency and accuracy. Now we have an intensive understanding of our information’s sources and high quality and are assured that our AI integrations will ship appreciable worth to our shoppers.
How is AI being built-in into ModMed’s specialty-specific EHR techniques like EMA and gGastro?
Throughout our portfolio, now we have been using machine studying for a while and strengthening our funding in superior and generative AI to simplify the enterprise of medication and expedite high quality care. We’re constructing out a whole AI-powered observe expertise that begins earlier than a affected person walks within the door, extends by means of the examination room, all through to the billing division.
Within the medical setting, we’re within the closing phases of our AI ambient listening pilot program for EMA, which we imagine might be a game-changer for its downstream performance and instructed structured content material. Our AI-powered documentation answer is designed to streamline the care course of past simply transcription or drafting a SOAP notice. Using huge quantities of structured information, we’re coaching our AI fashions to seize important data from doctor-patient conversations and, working alongside our EHR, to counsel related content material for go to notes, together with ICD-10 codes, surgical codes, and prescriptions. This protects physicians treasured time and permits them to spend extra high quality time with their sufferers.
What particular advantages do specialty-specific AI options present to healthcare suppliers and sufferers?
No two medical specialties are alike. They range broadly with the sufferers they see, the circumstances they deal with, and the medical codes used for reimbursements. AI options should be tailor-made to accommodate these variations to be efficient in any actually significant method.
For instance, ModMed’s EHRs and AI ambient listening instruments are tailor-made explicitly to every medical specialty, offering extremely related and exact assist to clinicians. Every specialty’s documentation course of requires completely different elements inside the structured information notice, together with distinctive medical codes and terminology. This specialization permits the AI to higher perceive and anticipate the distinctive wants and workflows of various specialty practices, which we imagine will lead to extra environment friendly implementation, quicker adoption, and better general effectiveness in bettering operational effectivity.
The place do you see essentially the most important alternatives for AI in healthcare over the subsequent 5 to 10 years?
Sooner or later, AI will undoubtedly permeate practically each side of healthcare in methods we will’t think about. Already, AI is being harnessed for administrative duties, and within the close to time period, this pattern will doubtless surge as AI’s worth turns into extra obvious.
I additionally see a future when AI is seamlessly built-in all through doctor-patient interactions, the place the ‘consumer interface’ or UI is nearly invisible. As a substitute of at the moment’s screen-based interactions, AI may supply a mix of actuality and augmented actuality. This future state AI may probably analyze well being information to establish vital insights, predicting a affected person’s danger for varied ailments. The huge quantity of information in medical information presents a possibility for AI to anticipate future care wants and create and assist handle preventive care remedy plans.
This expertise may lengthen past the observe setting and turn out to be integral to a affected person’s each day life. AI-powered wearables may present customized assist, reply questions, and schedule appointments amongst different issues. AI may additionally monitor very important indicators remotely, detecting and alerting suppliers to potential well being points. Customized remedy plans, tailor-made to particular person sufferers based mostly on information and preferences, may turn out to be the norm.
That is actually an thrilling time for healthcare. The subsequent 5 to 10 years are ripe with alternatives to additional rework the business and enhance the affected person expertise.
Thanks for the good interview, readers who want to study extra ought to go to ModMed.