← Power Hour Optometry
Power Hour Optometry
Tech-Enabled Practice Growth: AI, Automation & the Future of Patient Experience with Altris and Adit
00:50:46
Technology is no longer a “nice-to-have” in optometry — it’s the edge that separates growing practices from stagnant ones. In this episode of Power Hour, Eugene Shatsman brings together two leading innovators transforming how care is...
Loading summary
Transcript115 lines
- [00:00]
Stephen
Foreign.
- [00:07]
Eugene Shotsman
Welcome to the Power Hour, Optometry's biggest and longest running show. I'm your host, Eugene Shotsman. And today we're talking technology, but not in the abstract. We're talking about tools that are actively reshaping both the clinical and the patient experience aspects in optometric practices. Right now, in this episode, I am joined by two innovators with two different vantage points. Grant from Altrus AI comes from a company that's using artificial intelligence to transform how OCT data is interpreted and how it's communicated. And Stephen from ADIT is talking about a platform that's designed to unify patient communication and make things easier in your practice. So today we explore what innovation really looks like in today's practices. And some of us are maybe just not even aware that this stuff is available and available now. We talk about where the biggest opportunities lie, what's holding practices back, and also how technology can stop being just another thing to manage and start becoming a force multiplier for growth and patient satisfaction. We also cover some barriers to adoption. AI in the exam lane, automated recalls. We talk about tech enabled practice of 2028 and what that'll look like. We talk about things like AIs talking to other AIs in the future. And it's really just kind of a wild, fascinating, but also practical conversation. So if you're running a practice and wondering what tech tools are worth exploring, or you just want to hear what's on the horizon and what's coming, this is an episode you're going to enjoy. As always, let me know what you think@eugene shotsman.com or on the Power Hour website and make sure that you're subscribed on Spotify, YouTube, Apple or wherever you get your media social shows. And now let's go to today's episode. All right, Grant and Steven, welcome to the Power Hour, guys.
- [02:01]
Grant
Glad to be here.
- [02:03]
Eugene Shotsman
All right, so I think that the best way to start the conversation is for each of you to just spend 60 seconds giving the audience a really brief introduction to the innovation that you're bringing to the industry and also just a little bit of background of who you are. Grant, you want to go first?
- [02:19]
Grant
Sure. Altrus AI was founded in 2017 in Chicago. University of Chicago is our first investor, but the company's been built mostly in Ukraine, so we're a Ukrainian company. A lot of our employees are now in other countries because of the challenges over there. But we've built an AI for OCT that works on all the OCT manufacturers. That's built around decision Support making it easier to identify 70 different pathologies, biomarkers, and enable physicians to be faster, as well as make sure they see everything that comes up in those tests.
- [02:52]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting, and we'll get into this a little bit later, but it's interesting the clinical applications of your work in terms of where optometry is headed. Stephen, give us a little bit of a background too.
- [03:07]
Stephen
Yeah. To shed some light on audit. So we've been around as a company for about 12 years. We actually, a lot of people don't know this, but we started as a marketing agency 12 years ago working with medical products like dentists and optometrists. And we started creating pieces of software to help our marketing clients, like scheduling, review, generation, in which we took a deeper look at our business platform and decided, you know, there's a thousand marketing companies, but very few all in one software companies. So we took about a year to develop an all in one software. We launched it first in the dental space about seven years ago. 4,000 dentists currently use the Addit platform. And we took a look in Toptometry and thought this is an industry we could truly serve the best. And we launched it about a year ago in optometry.
- [03:51]
Eugene Shotsman
Purpose of the software is to do what for optometry and why is it so innovative?
- [03:56]
Stephen
Yeah. So we combined what you typically have to hire about four to five different companies to provide in a singular platform. So everything from phone systems, patient communications, advanced analytics platforms, review generation, we've managed to create this all in a singular platform for practices.
- [04:14]
Eugene Shotsman
Okay, great. And we'll jump in more as to how that actually drives revenue and also helps practices grow shortly. But I think I'd like to ask both of you guys, is from your vantage point as both innovators in the space, as both people who are selling technology in the space, what's changed in the past few years that's made optometry more open to innovation and new tools? Stephen.
- [04:43]
Stephen
I would say necessity. I've been in the optometry space the last 11 years, and it's been the same names the last 11 years for the services we provided software. And there needed to be another company to step up with advanced technology to take optometry to the next level of this kind of technology.
- [05:00]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah. Grant, what do you think?
- [05:02]
Grant
I think there's a lot of factors. Covid was a big impact. We saw telemedicine become huge during that time, which required a lot of practices to have to upgrade instruments, change technology. That was a big Impact. But also this next generation, we've got a lot of people getting ready to retire that need care as well as we've got a generation coming up that's kind of demanding a different level of care.
- [05:26]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah. And in your case, what prompted the development of AI specifically for like, the OCT interpretation component?
- [05:36]
Grant
Yeah. So our co founder is a retina specialist from Kiev and she was looking to find a way that could help her with better referrals as well as increase the knowledge of those that are referring to her. And so they first built an actual app that's on the App Store right now. You can download. It's funny, at trade shows, people come up to us not realizing that the app is us as well. That's about OCT training. And so there's just a. We took this approach of coming from the clinic side. How do we help the clinic and grow from there.
- [06:07]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah. And, you know, I think that there's an interesting concept of adoption which we're going to jump into shortly. But I'm curious to hear, you know, our practices embracing AI based innovations right now, or are they still a little cautious?
- [06:25]
Grant
On my side, there's a lot of interest. There's a lot of people looking at it, a lot of people kicking tires. I think there's a lot of concern. People are kind of worried about how are they going to use AI and how is it going to be implemented. And I think that's, that's one of the things you really have to look at is how can you, at this point, I think how could you not be using AI? Everyone's using it for everywhere you go, it's being used. So it's a matter of really jumping on or being left behind in some ways.
- [06:51]
Eugene Shotsman
All right, so we're going to jump into the clinical piece of it shortly. But Stephen, from your vantage point, what do you think is going on in the minds of the patients, the consumers, and why is, and how have communication needs evolved over time? That requires some innovation in that area.
- [07:10]
Stephen
Yeah, I would say from an aspect, let's say patient communications, our ability to ensure patients are showing up to appointments or retaining patients, I would say adding lines of communication. So something unique we do is we don't just send text messages or emails to remind patients to show up to those appointments or to recall so they don't churn. We've actually created automated voice calls on behalf of the practice as well. So now they have phone calls on their behalf, emails and texts. So saving staff time and making it easier for these patients to show up their appointments.
- [07:42]
Eugene Shotsman
Do those phone calls leverage AI at that point, or do they sound like. Can you make them sound like the doctor yet?
- [07:49]
Stephen
We have some amazing AI innovations releasing over the next about 60 days where it would actually sound like. It would be the doctor's voice, the office manager's voice, and that's coming soon.
- [07:59]
Eugene Shotsman
That would be super cool, but kind of creepy. This is Eugene's clone calling you to remind you that. This is Ryan Seacrest calling you to remind you of your appointment, that you need to come see that eye doctor. So let's talk at, like, practical. Practical. Super in the practice level. So I kind of grant you need to. I think people are not always familiar with what happens through the process of an oct. So maybe you can just kind of like talk through the clinical flow of how an AI can support what typically happens in a practice with an oct.
- [08:46]
Grant
So many practices have standardized on oct, and you're seeing that more and more. They're putting October their practice, and every patient's getting an OCT and they're using it to screen for pathology, screen for diseases. And I think it's a great opportunity to catch things early. The challenge is these devices weren't always necessarily designed for screening. And so sometimes you can get information that, you know, someone's got a little bit different anatomy. Some things might throw someone off. And what we've done is build a tool that makes it easier so when that data comes in, they can look at it quickly and make a decision from there. But really the workflow is the patient comes in, they usually go straight to the oct, they get it done, they go into the exam lane. They might do a fraction, they might do something else. But then at that point, the physician's reviewing the test results, and the physician.
- [09:33]
Eugene Shotsman
Is reviewing the results as interpreted by AI or I mean, just, you know, humor me for a second. There's going to be some people who are listening to this and say, I don't have a problem reviewing the OCT. I do it every day. I do it 10 times a day. Why do I need this?
- [09:50]
Grant
Well, part of it's going to be patient education. So we've got several docs in the US that are using it that way right now is they see, they know what they're looking at, but the patient doesn't. And so if you're showing a grainy black and white B scan and you're scrolling through it and trying to tell the patient what they're looking at, there might be some confusion there where we're adding in color and Identifying different pathologies and showing what it is. It's great for the. It's great for the physician just to make sure, you know, they're not going to miss anything or just to validate, you know, really what we're trying to do is validate what they already know, show them and say, yes, I agree, I don't agree. Look at that. But then again, for the patient, being able to show them what it is is really important.
- [10:29]
Eugene Shotsman
Got it. So it comes down to patient communication, patient value in some capacity. And it also comes down. And then now this is where it kind of gets, you know, when I show the patient, what am I showing them? And why, again, you know, why do I need AI to interpret it for the patient? Why can't the doctor interpret it for the patient?
- [10:49]
Grant
And they certainly can. I believe there's a lot of doctors who are really good at it. We launched a new feature at Vision Expo west, or, sorry, Vision Expo east, this optic disc analysis. So we're looking at the macula and the optic disc now, and one of the features of that is we're using disk damage likelihood scale. And I can look at eight of the last visits all aligned next to each other. And one of the big benefits of that with the patient, especially with glaucoma, you know, patients who are on drops, a lot of times they're not using the drops because they don't see a difference. But the problem with that is as soon as they stop using the drops, that's when the difference happens. And so being able to educate them and show them, hey, this is staying stable, that's what we want. You're doing a good job. Follow this, where if I was just looking at, you know, a visual field report or the oct, you know, trying to explain that to the patient, it could be challenging versus showing them a history.
- [11:38]
Eugene Shotsman
Mm. And it's interesting because I immediately go to Stephen's role on this call is I think about what's the ideal patient communication flow? What have you found, Stephen, when it comes to. When it comes to reaching patients, getting patients to come back more often, getting patients to actually understand the value that their eye care provider is bringing to them versus all of their other available options. What's the best way to communicate that to patients?
- [12:07]
Stephen
Yeah, I would say, to be honest, is staying on top of your marketing to your patients, the services that are available and what you could do. So, obviously, a lot of the patient base for certain practices don't understand, you know, the vast array of services they offer. Like, they could correct Their eyesight, wearing contacts overnight with orthopedology, things like that. So we have an amazing email campaign system built in where we could really educate patients better on their options out there.
- [12:35]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah. And are you saying, and I'm just curious, techniques wise, what gets the most reach? Is it email? Is it text message, is it voice call? What's the best way, mechanism wise, to reach a patient?
- [12:50]
Stephen
It's text message. Hands down. 90% of people read a text and three, three, three minutes or less. And I mean, you could probably agree with me if you don't recognize a phone number, you most likely don't answer it. You probably don't check your emails as frequently as your text says. Hey, text is, is king.
- [13:06]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah. So I, I, I've seen something really similar and one of my, sort of, I guess not a secret anymore, but one of the things I talk about sometimes is how MMS is so much better than sms. Right. You've got, because an MMS includes a picture. Yes, it's three times the price of an sms, but we're still talking pe and usually if you include a picture then, because, you know, people get spam text messages all the time now. Yeah, that's, it's kind of a growing concern and carriers are doing something to try to prevent it, but not enough. And so you don't want to be labeled as spam and you don't want the patient to think you're spam. So one of the things that if you get a text message from someone you don't recognize, if it includes a picture and that picture is either a picture of your doctor or a picture of your, or a logo of the practice or something that they can recognize. Seems like that's been a really big lift in terms of conversion rates from patient communication.
- [14:06]
Stephen
I'd agree with that. And I'd say making sure your texts are blue and not green is huge. So things like that.
- [14:13]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah. Right. So let's talk about how you measure impact. And this is, you know, Steven, I'm going to start with you as if a practice switches their communication tools to something that is much more innovative. But you know, like I, I will say I think the industry is fairly saturated. You've got lots of tools. Some start with a W, some start with an S, some start with a number. But they got lots of tools that a practice can use to potentially communicate with their patients and to be able to work well in, in, in the space of, or at least in their minds, work well in the space of communicating with patients. What are they Missing. Where's the impact? Where's the, where are the hidden dollars? If I'm paying for something that already does some, some, some, some sort of job to communicate with my patients, what rock should I be looking under to find those dollars?
- [15:12]
Stephen
Yeah, so we, you know, coming from the dental background, and if you want to talk about saturation for this technology, dentistry is 10, which breeds us to create really amazing products to step to shine. So we actually have a system called practice analytics. And we provide analytics in a way no one has introduced optometry. So we could actually provide dashboards each month that show every patient that's entered recall that month if they got scheduled, are they overdue? We have advanced analytics to show a practice how many patients are churning each month. And then we can actually take these patients and put them into mass text campaigns, mass email campaigns to reactivate them. So we provide much more advanced tools than anyone else as far as measuring metrics and making them actionable.
- [15:58]
Eugene Shotsman
How do you get a patient to not leave? Meaning, you know, if you start mass texting them, you know, one of the concerns I've heard is that if you text them too often, they're going to unsubscribe. If you email them too often, they're going to unsubscribe. And if you are the primary patient communication tool that that practice is using, then what the heck does that patient, that practice has lost the ability to contact that practice or that that practice has lost the, the ability to contact that patient altogether.
- [16:32]
Stephen
I agree. You know, you, you really shouldn't be the practice releasing promos every two weeks and, and burdening, you know, patients with, with these ongoing text campaigns or emails. You gotta be tactful and you gotta specifically, you know, target specific patients for these different things. So the cool thing about audit is we can actually create lists from the EHR of specific patients that would be ideal candidates for specific campaigns. So we're able to appeal to a specific demographic versus, you know, doing the shotgun approach and doing too much.
- [17:03]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah, so what does that look like, for example?
- [17:06]
Stephen
Yeah, so something great about us. Let's say you wanted to run a campaign specific for pediatrics. We could isolate a list of patients by an age range for the ehr. We could put together a campaign that you may want to have more oriented around children. We could specifically isolate patients you've done previous consults with. So if somebody, let's say you want to see a list of every patient you did a dry eye consult for the last year, I could isolate that list and then with that list, I could do marketing or promotions relevant to that service. So I'm not just, again, doing a shotgun approach. It's targeted.
- [17:40]
Eugene Shotsman
Right. But the practice is running that. What happens on autopilot that, you know, is not happening in other places because, you know, and what you're describing is, you know, somebody at the practice has to go pull these lists, come up with the campaigns, pull the stuff. I totally get it. And I think that's a valiant effort for sure. But at the same time, there's all kinds of things that run on autopilot in the practice. And I think that's what a lot of people are looking for, is they're looking for an autopilot solution that I can just kind of plug and chug. And this solution helps me communicate and engage with my patients. So what are you guys doing on autopilot that really, you know, based off of your dashboards and your data, delivers the most amount of impact?
- [18:25]
Stephen
Yeah, I would say. I mean, it's going to be the patient communication suite. So that's our ability to automate their confirmations of appointments, reminders, recalls. I have already reminders, contacts, lens ready, where those are on autopilot. Automated text, email, phone calls, really delivering this with automations taking away manual work of having to call these patients, things of that nature. So those features are all completely autopilot.
- [18:50]
Eugene Shotsman
And if I have some of these other tools that are common in the optometric space that I might have mentioned before, what are you guys doing that they're not on autopilot?
- [19:02]
Stephen
So we are able to create everything in one spot. Right. So autopilot, we're obviously doing the patient communications. We're able to autopilot the review generation. We're able to autopilot their patient forms, digitize those to be automatically sent out before an appointment, and integrate back to the ehr. We're really autopilot their whole front office. So a variety of services.
- [19:23]
Eugene Shotsman
Got it. Okay, good. So now let's. Let's talk a little bit about integrating. And I want to think about if some. If a practice. And Grant, I want to go back to you. What are some of the biggest objections or challenges that you hear when you approach a practice and you say, I've got this great tool, right. I can for you guys specifically, you can read the OCT better, you can communicate the value or you can communicate the value of the exam potentially better to the patient, and the doctor has more information, the patient has more information. Sounds great. What are the biggest objections that you're hearing in the field. What are some of the biggest obstacles that you're hearing from practices when you're presenting them with your solution?
- [20:16]
Grant
I would say a lot of it comes down to they're already comfortable with OCT and they're not seeing the value. When Steven was talking earlier, I was thinking, man, it'd be great to create a program that looks at all the patients that haven't had an OCT in the last six months and send them a message saying, we've got this new AI tool. Come in and see how your OCT is being used with that. So I think they're certainly a big part of its patient engagement, but there's also that just make sure I don't miss anything. Make sure that I'm comfortable with everything that I'm seeing. Because if you think about AI, humans are in the 80 percentile of effectiveness, most AIs are in the 90 plus percentile. And so there's that gap there that it might be just a little bit better, it might find some things, but generally the pushback is either they don't have an OCT yet, or they're looking at a lot of different technologies they're going to add and trying to figure out what's the right one next for them.
- [21:14]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah, and I'm kind of, you know, let me get both of your opinions on this, guys. If I had an AI tool in my practice and I, and I tried to reach out to patients, do you think, how receptive do you think patients would be to say, hey, we're using AI to now, we're now using AI to look inside your eye and you know, we're now an AI powered practice. How, how receptive do you think a practice would be and what would you say to the patient that gets them super excited about it? If, you know, if, if a patient would be excited about it. Stephen, you're a marketer. What do you think?
- [21:54]
Stephen
Yeah, I mean, if we think about AI and the growth and really two years ago, the capabilities we have today, people would have thought was just, you know, in a sci fi movie. Right. I think it's growing and it's not going anywhere. And I think patients at this point are maybe not as comfortable as they're going to be even a week from now. But I think it's a growing necessity and people are coming to light that it's something that's going to be involved in our, in our daily lives here on out.
- [22:20]
Eugene Shotsman
Grant, what do you think? What kind of patient communication do you think you've heard that's effective?
- [22:27]
Grant
I'VE got a great story about this. About two months ago, I got a call from a person in Canada asking about our software. I'm talking to him for 20 minutes before I realize it's not a physician. This guy's a 67 year old tugboat captain who has AMD. He was seeing his doctor, asked his doctor if there was AI. The doctor said he didn't know. This tugboat captain went home, went on the Internet and he found me and I'm talking about what we can do and he offered to pay for the doctor subscription for the doctor to use it on him. And so if you've got a guy that's driving tugboats, that's in his late 60s, that's asking for it, you got to believe with ChatGPT and Gemini and all these other AIs out there, people are just kind of expecting it. I think they'd be more surprised that you aren't using it.
- [23:06]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah, I tend to agree with you because I think that our consumer experience is quickly evolving to integrate AI into so many parts of our lives. And I know that I've been, I'm a little bit more of an early adopter maybe than some of my colleagues, but the reality is that, you know, you can't search Google today and ask a question without getting an AI generated response. Right. So it's almost like I think at some point in the future you'll probably walk into a practice and expect it as a patient. And it would be the same thing as if the practice was like, hey, we're still using a fax machine, we don't have the Internet, we can't email use anything. Maybe not quite as stark, but I kind of like the idea of saying we're an AI enabled practice. AI supports the clinical work that we do with our patients and AI supports the communication that we have with our patients to make it more convenient, more effective and that kind of thing. So when you hear this again, why aren't more practices reaching out to you and saying, let's go, Grant, you know.
- [24:21]
Grant
The biggest challenge we have is people knowing we exist. You know, we're a small startup and we've been to several shows, but getting people to see where there is our biggest challenge right now. Part of the reason, you know, I'm here talking with you, but I liked your Google analogy. What I've started seeing more and more people doing is they're actually using ChatGPT to search instead of Google now, because with Google, I'm searching then trying to find a website that'll tell me what I'm looking for with ChatGPT, it just tells me, and I know Google's starting to do that as well, but it's kind of that shift, right? People who've been using OCT for a long time, it's kind of like searching on Google for a long time now. There's just a better way to do it.
- [24:56]
Eugene Shotsman
So it's funny, I, I've been following what percentage of, you know what, what percentage of the search market Chat GPT has, and right now it's still in the single digits for sure. But. But it is really interesting to see how many people begin their. You know, when you, when you think about the types of behaviors that we have, I think sometimes when we're looking for a local business, we still go to Google. Right. If I'm looking for an eye doctor, I still type in eye doctor near me on Google. And if we're. But if we're looking maybe for a solution like I need, I have my remote broke and I want to fix my remote, I might go to Chat GPT, I might go to Google. But in both cases, I'm expecting the solution to pop out at me without me having to go click on five different websites and try to find something or whatever. I may also go to YouTube, I guess, if I'm looking for a video on how to repair that. Stephen, what do you think?
- [25:50]
Stephen
I'm with you 100% on that. I actually do almost every search now from ChatGPT, so I'm completely aligned with that. So, yeah, we definitely have to find ways to incorporate that and anything we're providing to practices.
- [26:03]
Eugene Shotsman
So how will AI change patient communication in the future from your vantage point?
- [26:10]
Stephen
So, I mean, you know, some releases we have. So from. From my own experience here at it, not to talk too much on what we don't have yet, but I mean, we're actually rolling out some features that would automate their scheduling through call. So essentially you could call, speak to an AI representative and they can actually book appointments for these practices.
- [26:29]
Eugene Shotsman
Got it. That's. That's interesting. And I'm curious, you know, if you guys have tested that or not. What's the, what's the likelihood that a patient would care or prefer one versus another, a human versus an AI to schedule an appointment?
- [26:45]
Stephen
Yeah, I mean, it's a little too soon to say it's in beta right now, but we do give an option with the AI where they could bypass it. So, you know, obviously I think there's, there's a mixture right so as to the exact metrics, I'm not too sure yet.
- [26:59]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah, it's, it's interesting because I think this will be, I mean, look guys, anytime I call a company and I had to call a company recently, there's a problem with my insurance and I had to call my insurance company for my house and in speaking and like, you know, there's an automated auto attendant and then, you know, I'm just trained now as a consumer to just be like representative, representative, operator, operator, operator. Come on. Yeah, give me a human, you know, that's, that's how my experience goes before I start cursing at it and then sometimes recognize that. So, you know, my, I, I'm hopeful that we're not creating another objection or another, you know, barrier or piece of point of friction and the patient experience by adding AI to the ever important phone call. Because a lot of phone calls, you know, they're like, I don't know if I trust the technology to answer all my questions. But at the same time, you guys are both absolutely right. Like we go to Google and we trust or we go to Chad GPT and we trust what that AI tells us to solve whatever problems we have. So I, you know, it's, I think it's a, I think it's an interesting, it's an interesting shift. What else from a patient communication, Stephen, are you guys looking at that might be, that may help drive an AI based patient experience in some capacity?
- [28:25]
Stephen
Yeah, I would say in the call the call coaching realm. So essentially we do record every call. So we do introduce some AI tools that could actually depict how well that front desk rep is actually handling calls and their conversion rates of calls from patient leads to actually book appointments. So I think that's a really imperative tool we're rolling out as well.
- [28:47]
Eugene Shotsman
Interesting. So you guys, that, that coaching gets provided to the practice, the representative themselves or the practice owner, practice manager. How does that work?
- [29:00]
Stephen
Yeah, so we, I mean we want to definitely give it to someone in a managerial role, an owner or a practice manager, whoever is more hands on. But I mean from again a marketing background myself. We definitely want to ensure that they are coaching their front desk of how to handle inquiries and make sure those are flagged and do call coaching, you know, once a week at least.
- [29:20]
Eugene Shotsman
Interesting. And you know, I think it's, it's important to think about all of the AI enabled components of the, of the patient experience grant. What's on the horizon when you, when you look out into the industry right now and you say, okay, we've Got this piece of the, you know, piece of the patient experience that we're. That. That we're AI enabling or that we're powering with AI. What else is there that you think would be such an important part of a patient experience?
- [29:53]
Grant
Wow, that's a big question. I think what's going to be in the future we're going to start seeing is AIs talking to each other, where my AI may talk to Steven's AI and start, you know, combining information and sharing between AIs. I think that's really where you're going to start seeing things. I've seen some now where email, some people's email is answering other people's email, which I think is fantastic. I'd much rather someone else read my email than me. But you're going to see some of these new technologies really start to integrate with each other in a meaningful way.
- [30:22]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah. And it's interesting because I look at all of the different things you could do in a practice to try to add an AI component to either the operations experience or the patient experience. Right. You could either make the operation more efficient, you can make the operation more, we'll call it patient centric. And also you could enhance the patient experience where the patient knows that they're, that they, that they're having direct contact with, with an AI facilitated by the practice. One of the questions I kind of, you know, you have to answer a little bit, and maybe this is a little bit philosophical, is that, you know, if, if AI is reading my oct, why do I need my doctor? What. What's the purpose? Long term, you know, big picture.
- [31:11]
Grant
That's a great one. You know, what I like to say is, you know, AI is not there to replace you, is to make you indispensable, really. You know, because our AI is not, we're not clear to diagnose. And that's really important I put out there is we're not clear to diagnose. We're decision support. So what we do is we provide as much information as possible to the physician for them to make a decision. They're going to look at it and choose and decide with their experience what they're going to do next. I think you never want to get rid of the doctor because there's so many other factors that you need to build into it. The eye care market is really fascinating because as a physician, they have more testing than almost any other specialty. They've got more information coming at them and I wouldn't trust to be replaced by that. There was an article that came out today that there's a hospital in China that's all AI, that there's no doctors there, but I don't know that I'm ready for that.
- [32:07]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah, it's interesting because the concept of patient care ultimately comes down to the feeling of being cared about. Right. The patient needs to walk out of the practice feeling like they, somebody took good care of them. And I'm not so sure that a robot can necessarily make them feel that way, at least in a super genuine way. When we come back from the break, I'm going to ask you guys about future proofing practices with technology and what you guys see on the horizon. We'll be right back. All right. We're back on the Power Hour. Steven Grant, excited to continue the conversation with you guys. So I want to take a moment, you guys are both in the technology space, and I want to take a moment and ask you guys from your vantage point, what does an optometry, a technology enabled optometry practice, fully integrated with technology, look like two or three years from now? You know, imagine you're walking into the state of the art optometry practice of the future in, I don't know, call it 2028 or something like that. What does that practice look like? Stephen, let's start with you.
- [33:19]
Stephen
Yeah, I would say, you know, it's, it's probably going to look like a lot, probably less staff members. I think a lot of the creations we have with AI, things like that, a lot of these things will seem redundant with some staff or some of the features. I think the technology we're going to have the next few years is going to be extremely impressive and I think to be a whole new outlook.
- [33:39]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah. And you know, when you're saying fewer staff, you're saying the technology is doing it. But what about the patient experience?
- [33:48]
Stephen
Definitely. So when I say fewer staff, I mean stuff really refocusing on what matters most. So doing less paperwork, making less calls that are unnecessary, and really getting more focused on patient care.
- [34:03]
Eugene Shotsman
Grant, what about you?
- [34:04]
Grant
Yeah. Building on what Stephen said, if you go into a practice right now, if you said that you could take someone's job away and say, okay, we can eliminate that position, most people are going to say, great, Now I've got 12 other things that person can do that they aren't doing right now. There's plenty of work for everybody. It's just putting them in the right path. I think the technology of the future is really more about patient care. I was watching a thing on Oracle Health has got this new AI that they're launching that's listening to the doctor in the room and transcribing and doing the charting just from the voice. And it does it in 27 languages and it can do two languages at once. And so it's really kind of fascinating. I think the future is, you know, the provider is going to be able to walk in and just talk to the patient. You know, be able to have a human conversation where when EMRs first came out, you started seeing the back of the doctor more often than anything because they're talking over their shoulders, they're typing. So really, for me, the future is really better patient care. Really. You know, we still need that human connection.
- [35:00]
Eugene Shotsman
Yep. And I think it's interesting because one of the things that you've talked about is having a more educated patient so that the patient can probably make decisions faster and can feel more informed. And if you talk about Stephen from your vantage point of having the tools that facilitate patient education ahead of time, as they're walking into that chair and then using technology to bring it all together, I think you could have a more operationally efficient practice, a practice that is more focused on the patient experience and patients who feel way better and way more informed about walking into an eye care practice because they feel like they've gotten the resources that they need. The doctor is the final expert, but the patient walks in. They didn't just Google something that's super unreliable, but they have the metrics, they have the data, and also have some education that helps them, that helps them understand what the doctor is talking about in that face to face interaction that they have. Right.
- [36:05]
Stephen
And I think having the ability to educate those patients beforehand with, you know, resources to educate them is going to increase the conversion rates of those patients to accepting treatment.
- [36:16]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah. And so let's talk a little bit about the biggest impediments to what you guys are doing or what you're seeing right now. What happens in the optometric space today that prevents doctors from adopting the technology that will make them super successful in this futuristic 2028 practice. Stephen, you go first.
- [36:38]
Stephen
Yeah, I would say definitely their ability to accept where things are going with technology and embrace it is going to put them in a position to be at the best spot in that time.
- [36:48]
Grant
Yeah, Grant, you know, I use an example of my wife, you know, when she had a BlackBerry, you know, trying to get. Get her to go from the BlackBerry to the iPhone was almost impossible because she just loved the way that keyboard felt. And, you know, the way I got her to change is when she told me she likes to be able to feel the keyboard as she's driving because she can text easier, feeling the buttons. And that was like, okay, that's dangerous, let's stop doing that. But in some ways that's just like the medical practice, right. They're so used to doing something some way that the times are changing. There's certain things we, we need to change, we need to do differently. And I can't even imagine her not having an iPhone now. She does, you know, she's talking to it more than she's texting or typing on it now. So it's, it's how those things change, right?
- [37:29]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah. And it's interesting because you, you think about the way that you're, you think about the way that we've all gone through the process of adopting technology in our lives as consumers. Right. I mean, it was just a mere 15 years ago that Google, that Google and the smartphone kind of came together to create the consumer's ability to have all of their information or all of the world's information easily accessible from their pocket. I still remember doing research in a college library. Right. Like, I remember that stuff. And my thought is, as we continue to kind of progress towards more technology acceptance from the patient, I think that in their day to day lives, I think they're going to have higher technology expectations for us as providers. When we're sitting in the chair and we're talking to them, I think they're going to be less impressed if we're not using technology to enhance that experience or if there's obvious friction that could be eliminated by technology because they went to, I don't know, their dentist or their hairdresser or the oil change place. And all of those places adopted technology in a way that, in a way that made the consumer experience much more frictionless.
- [38:52]
Grant
The dentist is a great example. When I go to the dentist, they put noise canceling headphones and they turn Netflix on and they lay you back. You know, it's a real experience now and I think patients are just expecting that kind of level of making it exciting.
- [39:07]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah, that's actually, that's really good experience example. Although how do they get you to open your mouth then if you're, if you're sitting there, mine's always yelling at me, open, open, open.
- [39:18]
Grant
Yeah, I think they start tapping your arm or something to make it do it. But it's, it certainly makes it. I, I like it just because I find what other people have been watching on Netflix. So I can find something new to watch.
- [39:29]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah, I think that's kind of cool. So let's do a little bit of. I'm going to ask one question and then each of you guys have a chance to answer and you decide who wants to go first based off of your perspective. But I love to bring people in with different vantage points on the industry. And so the things you guys do kind of give you unique perspectives. And our audience probably appreciates hearing from somebody who is not necessarily seeing patients every day, but is talking about a very specific part of the technological path of the practice. So I'm going to ask you guys quick fire responses from you guys. So what's one myth that you would like to bust about tech in optometry?
- [40:13]
Grant
I think that it's going to replace people. I think it's not going to replace people, it's just going to allow them to do more.
- [40:20]
Eugene Shotsman
Okay. Stephen, you, I think believe that we're going to have practices with, with lower number of people. So maybe it is going to replace people. Maybe it's. What do you think?
- [40:34]
Stephen
Well, on that, on that note, I do think, you know, obviously it would decrease the need for as much stock to, to an extent and you know, at the end of the day that's going to increase the bottom line of a business.
- [40:44]
Eugene Shotsman
So you, you may, you may disagree with, with Grant Smith. Okay, what's one myth you'd like to bust? See if Grant disagrees with it.
- [40:52]
Stephen
I would just say let's talk in the topic of switching programs and really it being a huge undertaking for staff and changes, I think a lot of practices are a bit apprehensive to switching their systems and getting the staff used to something that's new. I think typically once you set up a new system that's enhanced, that really benefits the staff more.
- [41:17]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah, it makes sense. By the way, on the topic of change management, how do you guys get practices to buy in when you introduce new technology? And I'll come back to my lightning round questions. I'm just curious. I know and I've talked to a lot of people who have technology, who bring technology in our practice. And even in the form of a big white box that's supposed to do a lot of great things and supposed to make you a ton of money and it's going to be so great and it's going to be so awesome and you just paid a whole bunch of money for it. So like you're bought in. Like literally you're bought in and then somehow you walk into that practice and you know, you open the closet and there's like three more of those exact same things in the closet that the practice thought was a good idea, you know, really got excited about, and then just. It never really took off. So how do you get practices to do this, to actually get into the concept of change management? Stephen, you want to go first?
- [42:14]
Stephen
Yeah, definitely. And that's. It is a consistent concern. You know, the doctor sees it and they think it's. It's amazing they're concerned. Well, what's, how's my staff going to feel about us, you know, uprooting our whole system? Right. So the way I always explain it is you need to convey to them we're taking away the mundane tasks that they do not want to do. So I don't think anyone wants to sit there all day and take a patient form that's been filled on pen and paper and scan that in and manually type in all that information and report handwriting. No one wants to do that all day. So if I could automate all that and have it seamless and have them refocus on items they rather focus on, then who wouldn't want to make their life easier?
- [42:51]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah, makes perfect sense. Grant, what about you guys on change management?
- [42:58]
Grant
I think the huge value we have is you don't have to load any software. We're a website and, you know, the technician exports a file from the oct, it uploads to the cloud, there's really nothing to install. And so the idea of putting it in isn't a huge lift. You're not doing a long training, it's like a 20 minute training. You're not shutting the clinic down for half a day to roll this in or slowing patients down. And the other big advantage of our solution is that it's a subscription model. So if after six months it's not working, you're not locked in forever, you don't have that thing in the closet that you bought.
- [43:31]
Eugene Shotsman
That does make sense, I think a little bit of. But, but the change management component is like getting the doctor to change how they do their exam. I find that that's not easy, you know, so if you're saying, hey, incorporate this tool and then use this tool to show the patient, like, how do you do that?
- [43:49]
Grant
I would say you're. You've actually hit one of the hardest things out there. Right. Because most of the things that physicians buy for their practice, they're not using that oct, they're looking at the report, but they're not the one using it. So it's not impacting how they see patients necessarily. When they buy a new water refractor, when they buy something else, the physician isn't the one using it where something like what we're providing, they are using it, and so getting them comfortable with it. The biggest value we have is that our interface is super easy. It's really fast and quick to pick it up and use it. And that's the biggest challenge. I mean, I'm sure you remember rolling out EMRs. I've heard that some practice administrators have threatened to quit if you change EMRs, and we're completely opposite of that.
- [44:32]
Eugene Shotsman
And it's. It is interesting because on one end, you're right, it's hard to get the doctor to change the way they do their exam. On the other end, it's the doctor got excited about it, they can now play with the. Play with the tool that they just. That they just got excited about. So that makes sense. All right, back to a question for each of you. Kind of lightning round here. So if you had to pick one metric to judge a practice's health, what would it be and why?
- [45:01]
Stephen
Yeah, I would say net growth each month, right. So looking at, you know, how many new patients we're generating, how many patients were churning, right. So keeping that into effect, because if you had a massive new patient month and you saw 50 new patients, but then that same month 60 patients went inactive in your system, then, you know, that's not really a healthy growth, is it?
- [45:23]
Eugene Shotsman
What is going inactive? How do you decide if a patient's active or inactive, Stephen?
- [45:27]
Stephen
So we let the practice have a bit of discretion in that, but we typically say around 24 months without a visit. It's going to be pretty likely they're going to probably go to a competitor or be seeing a new optometrist.
- [45:41]
Eugene Shotsman
And do you measure that on a regular basis to say, here's how many went inactive, here's how many went. Here's how many new ones you got? And do you, like, have a dashboard to show people that?
- [45:54]
Stephen
We do, yeah. Within our practice analytics platform, we have a net growth dashboard that shows those exact metrics. And we can extract the patients who went to that churn threshold and get them into an email campaign, text campaign. I always suggest small promotion. Hey, it's been a while since we've seen you. We want to offer 10% off your next exam, things like that. So we do have those capabilities. I believe we're the only one who does in the industry.
- [46:17]
Eugene Shotsman
Interesting. Really fascinating. Okay, Grant, what's your metric?
- [46:21]
Grant
I was listening to another podcast a couple weeks ago, and they were talking about the optometric practice and what's the best thing for the practice? And it boiled down to what's the best thing for the patient? If you're taking care of the patient, then that's going to help your practice grow. And so I think that's really what it boils down to is how are you taking care of your patients? Are you using technology as most possible to give them the best care? And I think if you do that, then the metrics will go up like Stephen's talking about.
- [46:48]
Eugene Shotsman
So you're talking about a patient experience type of metric, like around patient experience, patient satisfaction or something like that? Yeah, got it. Okay, what's one? Now I'm going to shift gears completely back to lightning round questions. What is one technology failure that you guys have experienced and what have you learned from it, and how does that impact what you're doing today?
- [47:20]
Stephen
I would say from us, when we first launched our software, it's a new undertaking, and I'd say seven years ago, they're definitely integrate to new EHRs, you have to figure out exactly how those work. We're rolling out massive technology like phone systems. So when we did first launch the software, there definitely were some hiccups, things like that. But we learned and we. We grew and now we've overcome that.
- [47:44]
Eugene Shotsman
Got it, Grant.
- [47:46]
Grant
So are you asking like a technology failure from our company or just in general?
- [47:51]
Eugene Shotsman
Something that we just in general, whatever. It could be yours, it could be somebody else's.
- [47:55]
Grant
Yeah, I gosh, I got to say, the Microsoft Zoom, the media player, you know, that, that was. It just didn't have the audience. Right.
- [48:04]
Eugene Shotsman
And you know, that's a. That's an interesting example because there was the ipod, right. And everybody had the ipod at the time. And then, you know, Microsoft did have a substantial amount of market share on software and, you know, people and had brand awareness. Why do you think it failed and what do we learn from it?
- [48:23]
Grant
I think it's core competence. Right. It's interesting though, because at that time, it was a failure for Microsoft, but then they came out with the Xbox. So I think they looked at what they're good at and they focused on that. Where Apple has been in the entertainment industry forever, and so focusing on music and things like that really worked out for them. Where Microsoft focusing on technology, it worked out for them. So it could be the same for the practice. Right. What are you good at focusing on that?
- [48:49]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah, that's a great insight. Okay, so as we wrap up. Steven, I'll have you go first. Where can listeners learn more about adit?
- [48:59]
Stephen
Yeah, so visit adit.com and, you know, we do complimentary consultations, walkthroughs, screen shares at your leisure. So just schedule a demo from adit.com I'll buy you lunch if you do a demo with us, we'll go and shoot you a $25 gift card and learn about how we can really advance.
- [49:16]
Eugene Shotsman
Your practice and grant. What about you guys? How can people learn about Altrus?
- [49:21]
Grant
So you can find us on Altrus AI, which before I came here, I didn't know AI was like.com, but Altruist AI is our website. We're on LinkedIn a lot as well. You can see a lot of our content there. And we can do live demos. We can pull your data in and show you how that looks. So, happy to consult or show anybody who's interested.
- [49:45]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah. And, you know, I think what we've talked about today is really a fascinating mix of clinical technology and patient experience technology. And the reason I wanted to pull the episode together is because there's a synthesis that's not necessarily so obvious, but it exists. And, you know, technology can help solve problems that we're all. People have heard me say this a lot, but we were all facing problems in our practice. Oftentimes the solution is technology. And it now is becoming more often than not, the solution is not more people, more or better people. Sometimes it's technology to empower those people. So if you're running a practice, you're looking to streamline, reduce risk, or improve the patient experience. Now, at this point, you've got at least two new tools to check out and learn a little bit more. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in, and thanks, guys, for being here.
- [50:34]
Grant
Thank you.
- [50:35]
Stephen
Thanks for your time.