Healthcare
5 min read

Biggest Highlights from Digital Front Door Day 2023
Liat Kozuch Field Marketing Lead and Podcast Host
Biggest Highlights from Digital Front Door Day 2023

How can one possibly attempt to summarize Digital Front Door Day 2023? 

How do you capture all of the insights shared in 25 illuminating sessions with the brightest blue-flame thinkers the US healthcare industry has to offer?

The answer is: You can’t. But alas, I’ll try. 

The following highlights were selected at random because there were just too many to choose from. I urge you to visit the entire Digital Front Door Day video library, choose your own highlights, and share them with the world. 

Alright, let’s get into it; here are three key highlights from Digital Front Door Day 2023: 

The Promises and Perils of Generative AI

Unsurprisingly, one of the pressing topics on everyone’s minds was generative AI. And if anyone still needed confirmation that this technology is here to stay, summit speakers erased all doubts. 

Discussions ran the gamut, with speakers lauding the potential of this technology to transform healthcare while also voicing their concerns about its safety and reliability in a patient-facing setting. Donna Roach, Chief Information Officer at the University of Utah Health, mentioned the inherent bias that comes with Large Language Models (LLMs). At the same time, Ed Marx, CEO of Marx Advisory, cautioned against AI hallucinations. 

In an industry as regulated as healthcare, where errors can have severe consequences, trust is the most important currency.

Health systems will need to be highly vigilant when considering gen AI vendors, as the market is now flooded with new startups that don’t actually have any receipts to show when it comes to safe AI implementation. Summit experts called for their peers to ask generative AI vendors “to peel back the veil” and be completely transparent about the architecture and mechanisms behind their solutions.

 

The bottom line: if a gen AI vendor avoids or tries to obfuscate the ins and outs of their tech, they can’t and should not earn the trust of your health system and the patients you serve. 

"Healthcare is transacted via trust. Everything, at the end of the day, boils down to trust. For AI to be trusted, you need to be able to peel back the veil and see how this algorithm works so you can mitigate the hallucinations, mitigate all the trials and tribulations, and build trust."
Aaron Miri
Aaron Miri
SVP, Chief Digital & Information Officer, Baptist Health

Measuring the Success of Your Digital Front Door

One of the critical challenges of building a digital front door strategy is measuring its success. But that did not deter our panelists from diving into their data to establish clear metrics for digital front door excellence. 

Summa Health’s CIO, Elbridge Locklear, gave the audience a behind-the-scenes glimpse into Summa Health’s journey to “staff” their Digital Front Door with Hyro-powered AI web assistants, delivering battle-tested best practices. Most importantly, however, Locklear shared supporting data to showcase the impact of this initiative.

Here’s Locklear revealed the results Summa Health has been garnering from Hyro’s Spot–a generative-AI powered web assistant:

Measuring the accuracy of your deployed conversational interface is just one metric you can use to assess the effectiveness of your digital front door. Dollars saved is, of course, another important one (if not the most important). 

Craig Richardville, Intermountain Health’s Chief Digital and Information Officer, delivered a complete and comprehensive breakdown of the metrics he measures to evaluate the impact of his system’s various Hyro web and call center deployments: 

"Our Hyro chat assistant resolves 40% of patient interactions end-to-end. Think about it: those are calls that will no longer require an agent to spend their time on while leaving the patient satisfied"
Craig Richardville
Craig Richardville
Chief Digital and Information Officer at Intermountain Health

The Future of the Digital Front Door

If the last decade taught us anything, it is that trying to predict the future is nearly impossible. With world events and technological advancements constantly shattering conventions, it’s clear that nothing is set in stone, and anything can and will change. With those factors in mind, our summit panelists did their best to forecast the future of the digital front door.

In his opening remarks, Hyro CEO and Co-Founder Israel Krush shared his vision for a digital front door that is:

 

  • Personalized: Will be able to discern between patients and deliver personalized experiences at scale. 
  • Proactive: Rather than just reacting, it will interact, offering proactive assistance and guiding patients. 
  • Contextual: Will retain the context of previous interactions and pull information from them upon request.
  • Ambient: Present in the post and chronic-care stages, sending out automated reminders to optimize medication adherence. 

Healthcare AI expert and former Microsoft National Director for Artificial Intelligence Tom Lawry believes that within the next three years, every health system will be using generative AI. The question is which organizations will be able to create a flywheel driving value at scale across the entire enterprise. 

Tressa Springmann, SVP, Chief Information and Digital Officer at LifeBridge Health, made the case that the future is built on data. Springmann said that how healthcare organizations care for and take advantage of the data at their disposal will be key in turning the digital front door from a reactive tool to a proactive ‘secret weapon.’ 

The People Behind the Door

That was just a tiny taste of the scenes that unfolded at the biggest virtual health IT event of the year. As I said, there are too many highlights to fit into just one blog post. But I believe the biggest highlight of the day was the audience.

Hundreds of curious professionals who care deeply about their work cleared up an entire working day to soak knowledge, bring back best practices to their organizations and foster new and old relationships. Asking tough questions and adding invaluable commentary to every session, they were the ones who made Digital Front Door Day into a landmark event.

Here’s to Digital Front Door Day 2024 🥂

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About the author
Liat Kozuch Field Marketing Lead and Podcast Host

Liat Kozuch is Hyro’s Field Marketing Manager & Video Podcast Host. Prior to becoming an audio superstar, Liat served as the Director of Operations, Events, & Sponsorships at Future Media Conferences, so as you may have already guessed, a jack of all trades. When she’s not interviewing the world’s leading healthcare and real estate professionals, you can find her taking endless selfies with her Australian Sheppard Thomas.

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