Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1076559
37 CIO / HEALTH IT Suki CEO Punit Soni on why automated clinical documentation is just the 'tip of the iceberg' & more By Jackie Drees P unit Soni, CEO and co-founder of Suki, an artificial intelligence, voice-enabled digital assistant for physicians, discusses how voice technology is helping decrease physician burnout as well as his predictions for how voice recognition soware will affect the future clinician experience. Editor's Note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length. Question: Can you tell me a bit about your background and why you started Suki? Punit Soni: I spent eight years at Google working on diverse areas from search to mobile apps, from social to games, as well as soware management for Motorola once Google acquired it. Most recently, I served as head of product for Flipkart — the largest e-commerce com- pany in India. I oen joke that aer working in all these spaces, it's only logical I dabble in healthcare. e starting point of any company is users and their problems. Tech- nology comes later. It's key to find a constituency that has a deep prob- lem where the solution aligns with an incoming technology trend. I found constituency in physicians. Aer spending several months looking at our healthcare system, one of the problems that jumped out was clinician burnout. Q: What sparked your interest in voice recognition software for physician use? PS: Physicians work on the most important aspect of our lives — our health. But between regulatory burden, documentation requirements and underlying technology, physicians are spending two to three hours a day just typing and entering data into their computers. I con- tend that physician burnout is one of the most critical public health issues we face today. Couple all this with the fact that voice technology is increasingly getting commoditized and more sophisticated by the day. is trend will have the same impact on complex enterprise data and solutions — such as those in healthcare — that mobile and touch interface has had in the consumer world. But, so far, voice has only been used as a speech-to-text technology. For example, verbatim conversion of what the physician says into words. e next generation of speech technology will understand what the physician says, understand intent and generate documentation, among other things, based on that understanding. is key difference between transcription and understanding is going to be the driver of a new kind of technology stack in healthcare — one that is assistive yet invisible, omnipresent yet unobtrusive and, importantly, all in service of the clinician. With this, clinicians will be free to focus on doing what they love, which is taking care of their patients. Q: What are some of the ways Suki can benefit physician workflow? PS: Today's record keeping systems in healthcare were built for back-office functions and serve an administrative purpose that can diminish the physician-patient experience. Suki is a digital assistant for physicians that starts by helping with the most onerous of their administrative tasks — clinical documentation. e prime focus of the company is to ensure various physician work- flows are streamlined and automated based on the physician-patient interaction. Physicians using Suki in clinical practice experience an overall 70 percent reduction in the amount of time spent on medical notes, but over time, it needs to do even more. Consequently, many ar- eas like order entry, pulling up patient data as needed and prompting helpful pieces of information as the physician goes about their work have become areas of interest. Once you have the permission to be in a physician's office with an experience that helps their workflow and saves time, it becomes possible to use healthcare technology in a way that benefits both physicians and their patients. Q: What is the most important factor that goes into de- signing voice recognition software? PS: Understanding your user. I contend that one of the big reasons a powerful technology company of the order of a Google or Amazon has not emerged out of healthcare is because no one has figured out how to marry the technology chops of great engineers with clinical thought process. e key part of designing a digital assistant is not just the technology, but an understanding of how physicians, our users, think. We must get into their head and think hard about what matters to them — which workflows are the most complex, what are the most significant stress points, where can a voice command shortcut 10 clicks to get to the desired outcome — and start from there. e other aspect is designing a simple, easy user experience. We can't li the burden of medical documentation and replace it with the cog- nitive burden of learning and remembering rigid voice commands. Our voice soware needs to be obvious, flexible, thoughtful and min- imalistic. We should not do one more thing that is absolutely needed until we are sure it is going to add value. Q: What are your predictions for the future of automated clinical documentation? Where would you like to see the technology continue to advance? PS: In a few years, key aspects of a physician's workflow that do not deal with direct patient care will be automated, allowing the physician to focus on their core work. at is just the tip of the iceberg. Phy- sicians want to be able to walk in and ask who they are seeing next, understand the context for that interaction, pull up data on-demand, and ask technologies like Suki to pay attention when they talk to a patient. Most of their workflows will get increasingly automated, and the resulting structured data generated will create a virtuous loop that allows the physician to let go of technology and focus on patient care. Over time, this is an opportunity to work with existing EMRs to re- think the entire health stack, such that all aspects of it are assistive, invisible and immediate. is will help physicians become more effec- tive, but in time will seep into better patient care and outcomes. e largest, most relevant technology company ever will be built in healthcare. And it is my prediction that automated clinical documen- tation will be a starting point for any effort in that direction. A direc- tion that will lead to happier physicians, healthier patients and more efficient health systems. n