Hamed Shahbazi is the Founder, Chairman & CEO of WELL Health Technologies, a Vancouver-based digital healthcare company. WELL Health is currently investing heavily in ethical artificial intelligence (AI) to support the Canadian healthcare sector.
Recently, WELL announced the launch of WELL AI Voice and also launched a new investment program focused on AI and its ethical applications in supporting healthcare providers with new, Canadian-made, next-generation tools, while supporting doctors at the same time.
Techcouver sat down with Hamed to learn more about how ethical AI can support the Canadian healthcare system.
How do you see the integration of AI technology in the healthcare sector and what impact do you think it will have on the quality of care provided to patients in Canada?
HS: We believe that AI-powered technologies will lead to better patient outcomes once integrated in the healthcare sector. At the heart of these innovations are next-generation digital provider tools that will positively disrupt and impact the healthcare sectors – first, by giving providers their time back and easing their administrative tasks and, second, by enabling providers with powerful clinical decision support tools that allow them to detect disease and design more accurate interventions.
Canada’s healthcare system has some significant challenges right now. Are any of these challenges something AI can help address?
HS: One of the biggest challenges facing Canada’s healthcare system is a lack of healthcare providers particularly in primary care. One of the reasons why primary care is not attracting enough new candidates is because physician burnout can be high due to administrative burdens facing doctors who are forced to not only provide care but also run small businesses. By saving physicians time and helping them with better tools to improve their administrative burden, we are allowing them to focus more time on providing care and less time on other administrative tasks. This serves to improve patient throughput.
What ethical considerations has WELL Health taken into account when integrating AI into healthcare?
HS: As healthcare is an intensely personal and critical experience for Canadians, our top priority is ensuring that our use of AI in healthcare is ethical, secure and responsible. When implementing AI, it is crucial to be unambiguously transparent about how we are using AI and how patient data is being used. It is also key to ensure that patient privacy is protected at all times – that’s why we have invested heavily in cybersecurity along with our investments in AI.
WELL is not just a developer and user of these innovative products; WELL is also a partner to other innovative companies that are doubling down on AI in order to advance the healthcare industry.
Can you tell us more about WELL AI Voice and how it can benefit healthcare providers?
HS: WELL AI Voice is an exciting new product that we recently launched to reduce the documentation and administrative burden on healthcare providers. Test results have demonstrated that physicians save up to 30 per cent of their time when using WELL AI Voice. It works by privately and securely capturing patient encounter conversations (with both patient and provider consent) and automatically generating a medically relevant chart note, allowing providers to focus on delivering high-quality care to their patients without the distraction of paperwork. This can help to free up time for healthcare providers so they can spend more time with their patients, improving both the patient experience and patient outcomes.
So far, providers love the product because it allows them to focus more of their consultation time on the patient and spend less time taking notes. Patients love the experience because they no longer compete with the doctor’s laptop for attention.
What can we expect from WELL Health in terms of AI integration in healthcare in the future?
HS: We are incredibly excited about the potential of AI in healthcare and have created a compelling product roadmap that continues to focus on empowering the healthcare provider with the best tools possible so that they can elevate their standard of care and deliver the best patient outcomes possible. We believe that AI will help drive improvements in areas such as disease detection and precision health which will allow healthcare providers to provide increasingly customized solutions for their patients.
At WELL Health, we are committed to ongoing innovation in the space of AI and healthcare to bring new, Canadian-made, next-generation tools to support healthcare providers while also supporting improved patient outcomes. Our commitment to innovation transcends the boundaries of our own company as we have created the WELL AI Investment Program, where we are seeking to invest in and help bring to market the most promising AI-powered healthcare technologies.
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