Inception Health Offers Digital Patient Experiences

Strong IT innovation, including the use of generative AI, is central to Inception Health, located in southeastern Wisconsin. In this video at the AWS re:Invent conference, we hear about their “clinical technology stack” from Dr. Melek Somai, MPH, Vice President, Chief Technology and Chief Product Officer at Inception Health and the Froedtert & Medical College of Wisconsin Health Network.

Somai points out that our population’s increasing health care needs requires the health care system to scale up, but “we can’t build more medical schools,” so we use digital technology instead. Virtually every other industry features “engineering-driven organizations” and “product-oriented teams.” This is what Inception Health has built, combining the contributions of researchers, designers, and clinicians.

The front-end is an app that lets patients build a “digital identify” for themselves and get the same services remotely that they get in person. The first offering was a “digital front door” activating a patient, now used by 80% of their patients. They now have a fully digital primary care clinic.

The back end runs a set of microservices (small functions that perform a single task and communicate with each other over web-based protocols) that run in the cloud. They are cheap and fast, scale easily, and allow faster innovation. They connect to all the back-end services, integrated with the organization’s EHR.

Inception Health also focuses on preventative care, which is available self-serve through the app. “You can’t wait for the patient to show up at the office” if you want to reduce health care costs, Somai says. Their service has decreased ER visits by 30%.

Somai feels very positive about generative AI to support digital services and says that the industry has an “obligation” to figure out how to do generative AI. Inception Health wants to be part of building it and are working to remove the hallucinations in order to build trust in it. Their current status is as a “playground for AI” with “lots of guardrails around it.”

One current service is a chatbot to discuss after-visit summary, which many patients don’t understand. They help with scheduling and next steps for patient to take.

Somai says “technology has to disappear” and is gratified that patients don’t even mention the technology when they praise the remote servie.

Watch the video for more details and a discussion of where Somai sees the industry heading with digital technology.

Learn more about Inception Health: https://www.inceptionhealth.io/

Learn more about Froedtert & Medical College of Wisconsin Health Network: https://www.froedtert.com/

Learn about AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/health/

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