HIMSS 2019 Live with Dr. Sandhya Pruthi of Mayo Clinic

VFH Episode 28

In this episode, Teri welcomes Dr. Sandhya Pruthi, a physician, the associate medical director for content management and delivery for global business solutions at Mayo Clinic, and the chief medical editor for MayoClinic.org

The Mayo Clinic is a leader in health-oriented voice technology. They have been a trusted provider of accurate health information for over 150 years. They provide the information in print, digital and mobile. They are now pursuing opportunities in the voice space. They have multiple skills and an especially unique relationship to provide first-party content to Amazon.

Key Points from Dr. Pruthi!

Why the Mayo Clinic feels that voice technology is an important area to get into.
The specific things that Dr. Pruthi does at the Mayo Clinic and in the voice space.

The Mayo Clinic and Voice

They have been watching the trends in the use of “search in voice.”
It’s predicted that in the next 5 to 10 years, more than 50% of people will search for healthcare information using voice-activated devices like smartphones and voice assistants.
They did early work in the voice space by developing a Mayo Clinic First Aid skill.

The Mayo Clinic First Aid Skill

The skill gives people access to Mayo Clinic content that spans 50 different first aid topics like fever, burns, chest pain, and others.
They wanted to make sure that they provided trusted information that would help users not only self-treatment, but also when to seek urgent or emergent care.
The skill enabled them to understand how they needed to condense the web-based content that is available today and publish it in a way that is conversational.

Providing Medical Content for Alexa

Their work on the Mayo Clinic First Aid skill then led the Mayo Clinic to work with Amazon to provide 8,000 concepts around health conditions that help users get information from the first-party use rather than just a third-party skill.
Being able to deliver high-quality healthcare information made Mayo Clinic a good partner for Amazon.

Converting their Written Content into a Voice Format

Mayo Clinic has a great editorial team that worked on taking their written content and creating conversational information that would ensure appropriate responses to questions.

Mayo Clinic’s Future Plans in Voice

They have 3 pillars:
- 1. Provide voice content around the needs of the healthcare consumer.
- 2. Look into how voice can help to improve the healthcare provider-patient efficiency in healthcare facilities.
- 3. Investigate voice as a diagnostic tool or bio-marker to detect certain diseases.

Vocal Bio-markers

The cardiovascular team at Mayo Clinic worked on how they could detect changes in the voice signal and intensity among patients who were having a coronary angiogram. They were able to detect correlations between the voice signal changes and a higher risk of having a heart attack or coronary event. They see that as a gateway towards developing a tool that could be used to take care of patients at a distance or remotely.

Where we are going with Voice Technology over the next 5 to 10 years

Getting into the personalized approach to healthcare and voice would be exciting.
Voice could help people search for the healthcare they need.
Voice could help people track changes in their blood pressure or heart rate, and predict whether an intervention is necessary.