TDP 111: Augmedix Founder & Chief Strategy Officer, Ian Shakil: Ambient Voice Scribes v. No Scribes, Partnering With Google to Beat the Competition & Smashing Clinician Burnout with a Sledgehammer

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On this episode of "The Digital Patient" podcast, hosts Alan Sardana & Dr. Joshua Liu speak with Ian Shakil, Founder, Director, and Chief Strategy Officer of Augmedix, about "Ambient Voice Scribes v. No Scribes, Partnering With Google to Beat the Competition, Smashing Clinician Burnout with a Sledgehammer, and more..." Click the play button to listen or read the show notes below.
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Audio:

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Video:

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Guest(s):

• Ian Shakil, Founder, Director, and Chief Strategy Officer at Augmedix
• Dr. Joshua Liu (@joshuapliu), Co-founder & CEO at SeamlessMD

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‍Episode 111 - Show Notes:

[00:01:25] How Mr. Shakil first got into health tech through his job at Edwards Life Sciences and seeing the challenges faced by clinicians;

[00:02:24] The Augmedix origin story; how Mr. Shakil met his co-founder at Stanford Medical School and how an encounter with some friends from Google X sparked the idea while trying out Google Glass and realizing the potential it had for helping doctors with documentation to reduce their burden;

[00:05:14] How Augmedix has evolved overtime, with clinicians wearing Google Glass as a form factor for their interactions, to now using smartphones to capture patient-provider interaction, and why Augmedix focuses on ambient intelligence, processing, and AI capabilities rather than the hardware being used;

[00:07:26] How Mr. Shakil describes Augmedix's role in the digital health space as  technology at the point of care that listens to natural clinician-patient interactions and converts the non-linear interaction into structured notes in the clinician's EHR — eliminating the need for clinicians to spend hours typing, allowing them to focus on patient care;

[00:08:29] How Augmedix’s ambient technology works using speech recognition, NLP, and AI to generate an AI-drafted medical note, which is then reviewed by a human or delivered in real time as an AI-generated note;

[00:09:05] How Augmedix has grown to offer a portfolio of different ambient listening products to meet the needs of different health systems — offering permutations and fungibility across their products instead of a one size fits all approach;

[00:09:41] How Augmedix Live works by offering synchronous live streaming with a human in the loop – a medical documentation specialist – with whom the clinician can interact with in real time, and with notes that are effectively done in real time as well;

[00:10:58] How Augmedix Notes works by offering automated, asynchronous documentation within a 4 hour SLA; most of the heavy lifting in note creation is through the technology, and then a human performs the last mile QA and structuring within the EHR for sign off;

[00:11:50] How Augmedix Go works by shifting the human in the loop to the clinician themselves by offering real-time note generation via best-in-class, medically-informed generative AI – at a fraction of the cost of Augmedix Live;

[00:13:47] Why Mr. Shakil believes human involvement is necessary to provide context and handle misses in AI-generated notes, particularly in oncology visits with complex pre-visit information;

[00:21:10] How the reception for ambient voice tech in the healthcare industry has changed from pre-2020 to now; the explosion of interest in the past year, with every health system in America now asking about their ambient play;

[00:22:00] Why there’s been a shift in interest towards ambient voice tech due to clinician burnout, as there is now a hard dollar associated with clinician satisfaction;

[00:23:18] How ambient documentation and intelligence will become vital tools in healthcare akin to the stethoscope;

[00:24:14] How competition has ramped up in the space, and why Mr. Shakil views the competition as a badge of honor for being first – or among the first – and sharing how there is room for many different solutions in healthcare;

[00:25:00] How Mr. Shakil believes the path to maintaining market leadership requires a focus on people, culture, partnerships, and successful implementations; emphasizing the importance of high-touch implementation, knowing how things work on the ground, and being differentiated in the market through strategies such as their product portfolio, number of unique care settings, and maintaining a “your data is your data” approach;

[00:28:28] How partnerships such as the one Augemedix shares with Google is a key differentiator and highlights their open ecosystem approach to extend their capabilities and help clinicians with more than just notes;

[00:34:00] How their recent partnerships, including MindShyft for prior authorization, Ellipsis for mental health screening, and The Sullivan Group for ambient nudges are an example of these additional use cases and benefits;

[00:36:16] Why Augmedix is now hardware agnostic and is moving towards integrating their capabilities into fixed ambient smart room equipment and other wearable technology, with the goal of making the service ubiquitous across various platforms.

[00:38:32] Why Mr. Shakil stepped down as CEO of Augmedix and become the Chief Strategy Officer as he believes that different phases of a company's growth require different leadership, and he wanted to focus on strategic partnerships and business development, as he’s always enjoyed the external and strategic aspects of his current role as Chief Strategy Officer;