Voice and Health with David Box of Macadamian

VFH Episode 41

In this episode, Teri welcomes David Box of Macadamian, a leading healthcare software and application development company specializing in user experience design and end-to-end software product development.

David Box is an internationally experienced business development and account management executive. He has demonstrated success in the ideation, development, and commercialization of healthcare technologies, industrial solutions, and creative agency services, in Europe, Asia, and the US.

Macadamian is an incredible company doing some very innovative work by looking at the latest technologies and using them to help businesses get their messages out, solve problems, and ultimately improve the efficiencies and lives of healthcare providers. They also focus on bettering healthcare quality for patients.

Key points from David!

Helping businesses develop software solutions, including voice-based ones, to their most major challenges.
Architecting the future of healthcare at Macadamian.
Working on a special project with Teri for Voice of Healthcare Summit

All About Macadamian

They work with clients to identify business challenges and solve those business challenges creatively with software.
They have three core areas to their business including software engineering, UX research and design, and data science.
They work with various groups in multiple verticals of healthcare to help them improve their business with software.

Macadamian’s Interest in Voice

Very early in the days of Alexa, Macadamian recognized the importance of voice as an input methodology, and decided to invest in learning the technology and developing various different projects as proofs of concepts for different use cases.
Their first skill (a voice-to-text skill called Scryb) was published in the Alexa library when there were only 12 skills available.

Macadamian’s Approach to Developing a Skill

They work with clients to understand their underlying business challenges and then come up with a technological solution that will help them solve that. If voice is a logical input methodology for the problem they’re trying to solve, they recommend it and build out a voice-based solution.

Voice and Health with David Box of Macadamian

Early Successes

They developed the Siemens Healthineers ultrasound skill for Siemens.
Siemens approached Macadamian about needing to engage both their sales force and potential customers with information about their ultrasound devices. Their challenge was to break through the noise.
They also developed the “My Diabetes Coach” skill for adolescents with Type 2 Diabetes. It’s a multi-modal solution that enables patients to speak their health results like glucose levels, weight, diet, and sleep habits. They are also able to get information about their disease state and how to take care of themselves.

The Future of Voice in Healthcare

There is a huge problem with physician burnout which has led to an increase in physician suicide. David believes that there are voice-based solutions that they can create to reduce the amount of paper work that a physician needs to do, and free them up to do more of what they love, which is treating patients.
There are plenty of work flows in physician offices that can benefit from voice assistants from recording data into their EMRs, to the business challenges of running a practice.

The Biggest Obstacles to Implementing Voice Technologies in Healthcare

Regulatory restrictions, some security factors, and certain functionality issues are some of the obstacles.
Voice-only is not there yet, but from a multi-modal perspective, voice can be used to augment certain input requirements to make it easier for people to access and provide data when and where they are.

The Voice of Healthcare Summit

David, Teri and Harry Pappas are organizing a 3-hour workshop that they will carry out at the end of the summit, and they will be doing a deeper dive into voice assistants in healthcare and looking at various use cases.
They will review the current state of the industry from a statistics perspective on the adoption rates, and so much more.
They will also look at where the technology has been and where they see it going to.