Daniel Cane is co-CEO and cofounder of South Florida-based ModMed®, a healthcare IT firm that’s remodeling healthcare by means of specialty-specific, clever platforms to extend apply effectivity and enhance affected person outcomes.
Based in February 2010, ModMed has grown to over 1,200 staff and has raised over $332 million in whole funding. Identified for its progressive development as a medical expertise firm, ModMed is continuously acknowledged each nationally and regionally for its achievements below Daniel’s management. In 2020, the corporate was named one of many Greatest Workplaces within the Nation by Inc. journal. Between 2016 and 2018, the corporate was named one of many fastest-growing corporations in North America on the Deloitte Know-how Quick 500™ checklist. Beginning in 2015, the corporate has been named yearly to the unique Inc. 5000 checklist, a prestigious compilation of the fastest-growing non-public corporations 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 after I co-founded Blackboard. We reworked schooling by digitizing class notes and making a platform that gave college students and college unprecedented flexibility and interplay. For me, Blackboard’s success culminated in 2004 with its IPO, and whereas our options had been game-changing in edTech, I couldn’t assist however maintain a watch out for brand spanking new challenges.
One such problem offered itself after I went for a routine checkup with my dermatologist. We had an unimaginable speak concerning the struggles of utilizing outdated paper-based methods and methods to repair them. Realizing the bridge between his medical experience and my technical know-how, we determined to group up and create ModMed together with our first digital well being file (EHR) platform.
On the time, some EHRs already existed, however sadly, research usually cited them as one of many main causes of doctor burnout. We took a unique method 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 medical doctors, for medical doctors, which has set us aside and defines our secret sauce available in the market. Through the years, we’ve expanded our product choices to incorporate a full suite of options that assist medical suppliers simplify and streamline their apply operations and expedite the supply of care.
How do you see the battle for efficient AI in healthcare being gained or misplaced with information?
We’re beginning to see an increase within the adoption of AI expertise inside practices to streamline workflows and maximize effectivity. As we transfer into an period of utilizing AI to do extra refined duties – comparable to suggesting remedy or different clinical-support suggestions – it’s paramount to have the proper 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 may really enhance healthcare, however making this a actuality will depend on massive quantities of high-quality information used to coach the fashions.
Why is information so crucial 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 could have dire penalties in a healthcare setting as affected person lives could also be at stake. However a extra probably situation is that these adverse experiences might undermine each sufferers’ and suppliers’ belief in AI, slowing down progress and the optimistic impression this revolutionary expertise can have on healthcare.
For instance, within the examination room, AI-enabled ambient listening instruments are designed to recommend content material for scientific notes for the supplier to assessment and approve. Ideally, this could cut back the period of time a supplier spends documenting throughout the EHR and permit for extra high quality time with the affected person. Nonetheless, poor information sourcing and ill-trained AI instruments might 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 threat 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 info inputs and coaching on sturdy and consultant information, AI outputs could 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 practice our AI fashions with precision. During the last 14 years, we’ve created specialty-specific, de-identified structured information units in step with privateness legal guidelines and are actually leveraging this in-house information to coach our AI fashions. For instance, our ambient listening instrument ModMed Scribe has been skilled for dermatology, our first specialty launch, on hundreds of thousands of structured parameters from de-identified affected person data sampled from a group 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 impression affected person lives. For that reason, moral AI in healthcare is about setting a excessive normal for accuracy and precision. It means creating algorithms rigorously and responsibly and utilizing high-quality and numerous information to assist allow extra correct predictions for each consumer.
Moral AI can be about making certain that people stay within the equation. An AI shouldn’t “out physician the physician” however as a substitute cut back the executive burden physicians and their employees 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 method—curating high-quality, consultant coaching information units—helps us make accountable AI a actuality. Related and de-identified information collected from our EHR methods from all kinds of practices gives us with a various set of coaching information that displays totally different affected person populations.
Moreover, our improvement group embraces information cleansing to facilitate amassing and using high-quality information. This course of permits our groups to determine, rectify, and take away inconsistencies, errors, and lacking values from the info set. Via this common upkeep, we are able to persistently replace the AI primarily based on efficiency information, particularly scientific information, the place affected person outcomes could be impacted.
Are you able to focus on the significance of transparency and accountability in AI improvement, particularly in healthcare?
Transparency makes accountability attainable, 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 essential to know the place and the way information is saved and sourced and the way recurrently it’s up to date. We’re lucky that since ModMed’s inception, we’ve got been dedicated to a knowledge 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 methods like EMA and gGastro?
Throughout our portfolio, we’ve got been using machine studying for a while and strengthening our funding in superior and generative AI to simplify the enterprise of drugs and expedite high quality care. We’re constructing out a whole AI-powered apply expertise that begins earlier than a affected person walks within the door, extends by means of the examination room, right through to the billing division.
Within the scientific setting, we’re within the last levels of our AI ambient listening pilot program for EMA, which we imagine might be a game-changer for its downstream performance and steered structured content material. Our AI-powered documentation answer is designed to streamline the care course of past simply transcription or drafting a SOAP observe. 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 recommend related content material for go to notes, together with ICD-10 codes, surgical codes, and prescriptions. This protects physicians valuable 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 extensively with the sufferers they see, the situations 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 really significant manner.
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 totally different elements throughout the structured information observe, 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 end in extra environment friendly implementation, sooner adoption, and better general effectiveness in bettering operational effectivity.
The place do you see essentially the most vital alternatives for AI in healthcare over the following 5 to 10 years?
Sooner or later, AI will undoubtedly permeate practically each side of healthcare in methods we are able to’t think about. Already, AI is being harnessed for administrative duties, and within the close to time period, this development will probably 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 just about invisible. As an alternative of at this time’s screen-based interactions, AI might supply a mix of actuality and augmented actuality. This future state AI might probably analyze well being data to determine crucial insights, predicting a affected person’s threat for varied illnesses. The huge quantity of knowledge in medical data presents a possibility for AI to anticipate future care wants and create and assist handle preventive care remedy plans.
This expertise might lengthen past the apply setting and change into integral to a affected person’s every day life. AI-powered wearables might present customized assist, reply questions, and schedule appointments amongst different issues. AI might additionally monitor important indicators remotely, detecting and alerting suppliers to potential well being points. Customized remedy plans, tailor-made to particular person sufferers primarily based on information and preferences, might change into the norm.
That is really an thrilling time for healthcare. The subsequent 5 to 10 years are ripe with alternatives to additional remodel the business and enhance the affected person expertise.
Thanks for the good interview, readers who want to study extra ought to go to ModMed.