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 complete funding. Recognized for its progressive progress as a medical expertise firm, ModMed is ceaselessly acknowledged each nationally and regionally for its achievements beneath 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 Expertise 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 once I co-founded Blackboard. We remodeled 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 have been game-changing in edTech, I couldn’t assist however maintain an eye fixed out for brand spanking new challenges.
One such problem introduced 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 We had an unbelievable speak concerning the struggles of utilizing outdated paper-based techniques and methods to repair them.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 file (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 special strategy and designed our EHR to adapt the consumer expertise to the precise 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 apply operations and expedite the supply of care.
How do you see the battle for efficient AI in healthcare being gained or misplaced with knowledge?
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 subtle duties – resembling suggesting remedy or different clinical-support suggestions – it’s paramount to have the correct knowledge 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 knowledge used to coach the fashions.
Why is knowledge so important for AI improvement within the healthcare trade?
Information is the lifeblood of AI, and poor knowledge 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 probably situation is that these unfavorable experiences may 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 counsel content material for medical notes for the supplier to evaluate 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. Nevertheless, poor knowledge sourcing and ill-trained AI instruments may have the other impact, leaving suppliers to as an alternative 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 knowledge can play a key function in mitigating healthcare disparities. AI fashions can be taught 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 strong and consultant knowledge, AI outputs could be extra inclusive and correct.
Are you able to elaborate on the sorts of knowledge ModMed makes use of to coach its AI fashions and the way this knowledge is sourced and managed?
At ModMed, we use complete specialty-specific knowledge to assist practice our AI fashions with precision. Over the past 14 years, we’ve created specialty-specific, de-identified structured knowledge units per privateness legal guidelines and are actually leveraging this in-house knowledge to coach our AI fashions. For instance, our ambient listening device ModMed Scribe has been skilled for dermatology, our first specialty launch, on tens of millions 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 info within the type of “hallucinations” or omissions can impression affected person lives. Because of this, moral AI in healthcare is about setting a excessive customary for accuracy and precision. It means growing algorithms fastidiously and responsibly and utilizing high-quality and various knowledge to assist allow extra correct predictions for each consumer.
Moral AI can be about making certain that people stay within the equation. An AI mustn’t “out physician the physician” however as an alternative cut 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 knowledge strategy—curating high-quality, consultant coaching knowledge units—helps us make accountable AI a actuality. Related and de-identified knowledge collected from our EHR techniques from all kinds of practices offers us with a various set of coaching knowledge that displays totally different affected person populations.
Moreover, our improvement workforce embraces knowledge cleansing to facilitate gathering and using high-quality knowledge. This course of permits our groups to determine, rectify, and take away inconsistencies, errors, and lacking values from the information set. By way of this common upkeep, we are able to persistently replace the AI based mostly on efficiency knowledge, particularly medical knowledge, 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 resolution in healthcare. Physicians’ prime 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 knowledge is created equal. It is essential to know the place and the way knowledge is saved and sourced and the way repeatedly it’s up to date. We’re lucky that since ModMed’s inception, we’ve been dedicated to a knowledge technique that prioritizes transparency and accuracy. We’ve got an intensive understanding of our knowledge’s sources and high quality and are assured that our AI integrations will ship appreciable worth to our purchasers.
How is AI being built-in into ModMed’s specialty-specific EHR techniques like EMA and gGastro?
Throughout our portfolio, we’ve 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 complete AI-powered apply expertise that begins earlier than a affected person walks within the door, extends by means of the examination room, during to the billing division.
Within the medical setting, we’re within the remaining levels of our AI ambient listening pilot program for EMA, which we imagine shall be a game-changer for its downstream performance and instructed structured content material. Our AI-powered documentation resolution is designed to streamline the care course of past simply transcription or drafting a SOAP notice. Using huge quantities of structured knowledge, we’re coaching our AI fashions to seize important info 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 differ 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 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 parts throughout the structured knowledge notice, together with distinctive medical codes and terminology. This specialization permits the AI to raised 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 almost 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 pattern 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 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 data to determine important insights, predicting a affected person’s danger for varied illnesses. The huge quantity of information in medical data presents a chance for AI to anticipate future care wants and create and assist handle preventive care remedy plans.
This expertise may lengthen past the apply setting and turn into 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 knowledge and preferences, may turn into the norm.
That is really an thrilling time for healthcare. The subsequent 5 to 10 years are ripe with alternatives to additional rework the trade and enhance the affected person expertise.
Thanks for the nice interview, readers who want to be taught extra ought to go to ModMed.
