EIS News & Events | Earley Information Science (11)

The Growing Role of Chatbots in Healthcare

Apr 17, 2017

They are not doctors (yet), but well-trained bots can get patients to engage more in their care, helping to close the $300 billion ‘adherence gap’ in taking pills and following orders, say experts at Earley Information Science roundtable No one would confuse them with young interns or seasoned surgeons, but chatbots are becoming the newest addition to medical teams. Hospitals and other providers, as well as insurers, are starting to employ these digital workers to remind patients to take their medicine, to monitor life signs and to track mountains of data across patient groups that could produce breakthrough insights about diseases and treatments. Already, consumers can choose from among dozens of bots that provide “care” as soon as they are downloaded. Help from the bots is critically needed – the lack of patient adherence to prescribed medications and to post-procedure instructions is putting tremendous strains on both providers and payers. Avoidable medical spending exceeds $300 billion a year, according to a recent study by CapGemini. But for bots to become major players in closing the adherence gap, and to deliver on other health-care and cost-saving fronts, their human bosses have to understand their capabilities while also appreciating their limitations, according to a panel of artificial intelligence (AI) and knowledge management experts at an Executive Roundtable discussion hosted on April 12 by Earley Information Science Corp. (EIS), a leading consulting firm focused on organizing information for business impact. The bots can greatly improve patient experience, the panelists said, and in the process improve adherence and outcomes. But the spread and acceptance of bots has been slowed by regulatory restrictions, insurance rules and privacy concerns that still have to be addressed, the experts added. And, they noted, because of AI’s limitations in understanding human language, the bots have to be seen as very junior members of the team, and a long way, if ever, from hanging out their own shingles. Bots can enable meaningful conversations with the care team and with patients, and encourage better patient behavior, “but they can’t provide medical advice and they can’t prescribe possible treatments,” said one of the panelists, Henry Truong, Chief Technology Officer, Teletech Holdings. Even the data that they provide about a patient’s condition, as rich as it is, can be missing the crucial nuances that a doctor’s eye, or touch, can add. The roundtable discussion, “The Role of Intelligent Virtual Assistants in Healthcare: How virtual assistants can help solve the ‘adherence gap’ and more,” was led by David Hatch, Senior Vice President for Marketing at EIS. Besides Henry Truong, the panel included Dr. Bruce Metz, Managing Partner, Bruce Metz & Associates; Michael Flammer, Partner, Life Sciences and Healthcare Customer Strategy Services, Teletech Consulting; and Richard Lynch, Vice President and Managing Consultant, Accelare Inc. The discussion was the second in a four-part EIS series, “The Age of the Chatbot Is Coming: Are You Ready?” The first roundtable, “Digital Workers, Chatbots and Customer Service: Reality Versus Aspiration,” was held on March 29. EIS held a related roundtable in January, “Virtual Assistants and Chatbots: The Next Big Thing in Customer Experience.” Bots are already a key part of the evolution of the digital healthcare ecosystem, said Dr. Metz. “Providers are increasingly getting paid on the quality of outcomes. Meanwhile, consumers are becoming more demanding and discerning. As they pay more, they want more convenient and transparent care.” Enter technology, and with it, “new directions for wellness and disease detection.” Where bots can be most usefully deployed is in the treatment of chronic illness, which consumes roughly 75% of the $3 trillion spent each year in the United States on healthcare. The next generation of bots, Dr. Metz said, will more fully interact with patients in their homes, featuring such new tools as wifi-enabled pill bottle caps to track the intake of medications. This larger role, akin to “a virtual physician’s assistant,” will result in better chronic disease management. The bots also provide extraordinary scaling opportunities, Henry Truong noted, allowing providers and payers “in non-homogeneous delivery networks” to share knowledge and increasing the ratio of patients to care-team members “without sacrificing the quality of care.” Bots can’t work alone, however, but rather in “orchestration” with the care team, extending its reach (not just geographically but also into patient lifestyle by monitoring many new things) and increasing its efficiency. But there are obstacles in the way. For one thing, said Teletech Consulting’s Michael Flammer, 75% of patients are very or somewhat concerned about the privacy of their health records. And those records will be exploding in size. The amount of quantitative data that will be collected by bots is going to be “overwhelming,” Flammer said. Yet from a qualitative standpoint, there will actually be a dearth of information. Is a patient’s skin coloring good? Is the patient depressed? How do those “data points” get collected? Are photos needed, for instance? From the provider’s point of view, “bots help to close capability gaps,” said Accelare’s Richard Lynch. “They provide new services along the care continuum,” including proactive education and support with financial questions. “They simplify the complexity, and help patients navigate the system.” In fact, he said, “chatbots are not a technology play but rather a business capability tool.” The challenge, Dr. Metz added, is for regulators and insurers to revise their rules on compliance and reimbursement. They have to catch up to the bots, he said, which are now “way out in front.” The roundtable featured a real-time survey of the webinar attendees: Nearly a fifth of the respondents, or 17%, said that bots are a major priority (supported by funding and executive buy-in) and 50% said they are important but still require a business case. The remaining 33% said bots are not a priority at this time. None of the attendees has been using bots for more than a year, but 14% have recently launched their first wave, another 14% have begun testing in one area, and nearly three-quarters, or 71%, are just starting to investigate how bots can be used. When asked where they would deploy their first bots, 100% of the participants chose extending patient care remotely. Sixty percent also identified patient or member services. Please use these links to access the roundtable and EIS resources about chatbots and AI. About Earley Information Science: Earley Information Science is a specialized information agency. We support business outcomes by organizing your data – making it findable, usable and valuable. Our proven methodologies are designed specifically to address product data, content assets, customer data and corporate knowledge bases. We deliver governance-driven solutions that scale and adapt to your business as it grows. For more information, visit www.earley.com. #####

PRESS RELEASE: Setting the Right Expectations for Chatbots

Mar 29, 2017

Armies of “digital workers” are poised to take over the front lines with customers, but they need rigorously organized data to perform well, and often a helping hand, say experts at Earley Information Science roundtable The numbers are very real even if the workers are virtual. Spending on Enterprise Intelligent Assistants, aka chatbots, is now exceeding $1 billion a year and is expected to grow to $4.5 billion by 2021, according to Opus Research. And a recent survey of 100 information management professionals found that 51% are getting ready to put chatbots to work with customers. But it is still early days in the development of artificial intelligence (AI), and companies have to be realistic about the kind of work that chatbots can, and can’t, handle, and the support they need to be effective, according to a panel of AI and knowledge management experts at an Executive Roundtable discussion hosted on March 29 by Earley Information Science Corp. (EIS), a leading consulting firm focused on organizing information for business impact. The data that is the chatbot’s lifeblood has to be structured in a way that is fully compatible with a company’s business, humans still have to help out, and tasks that involve a lot of context and nuance may be out of a chatbot’s reach, at least for now. That said, digital workers are already earning their keep, and are taking on more and more responsibilities as they get “smarter,” the panelists said, adding that companies would do well to go on a hiring spree so long as their expectations are properly set. Chatbots “are evolving very very quickly,” said Seth Earley, founder and Chief Executive Officer of EIS. “But right now they are not necessarily easy to use. There is no magic – chatbots require human intervention and knowledge engineering. They are an access mechanism to get to information,” which has to be carefully collected and organized so that the bots can understand and accomplish their tasks and learn new ones. The roundtable discussion, “Digital Workers, Chatbots and Customer Service: Reality Versus Aspiration,” was led by David Hatch, Senior Vice President for Marketing at EIS. Besides Seth Earley, the panel included Tom Davenport, a professor of information technology and management at Babson College and author of “Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines”; Dan Miller, Lead Analyst and Founder of Opus Research; and Mark Beccue, Principal Analyst at Tractica. The discussion was the first of a four-part EIS series, “The Age of the Chatbot Is Coming: Are You Ready?” with new roundtables set for April 12, April 26 and May 10 (details below). EIS held a related roundtable in January, “Virtual Assistants and Chatbots: The Next Big Thing in Customer Experience.” At this stage of bot development, companies should target “low-hanging fruit” to start out, Tom Davenport suggested, noting that so-called transformational projects involving bots that are pushed down from the top have a low success rate, particularly if the company is the first in its industry to make such a big move. The shift to digital workers “may well have a devastating impact on the job market in the future,” but right now, Davenport said, there is little job loss and no pure automation. “It’s a hybrid machine/human process.” The highest return on investment (ROI) is coming from the most prosaic applications and technologies, such as robotic process automation (RPA), and not from layoffs. As companies bring in bots, they should find the speediest ways to produce some business results while keeping an eye on costs, said Opus Research’s Dan Miller. Think about what works out of the box, but also factor in the ongoing expenses for professional services to collect, organize and reshape the data. Try to leverage existing resources, including key data, operational personnel and subject matter experts. And, of course, figure out the right tools for development, analytics and reporting, including metrics to track success and failure. “Some fairly complex implementations are already out there,” Miller said. In some cases, bots “can do more than just low-hanging fruit.” What are the “compelling market drivers” that are opening the market to chatbots? Tractica’s Mark Beccue noted consumer desire for 24/7 support and self-service and an aversion to live interactions. The use cases are also expanding – into financial services, for example, with the onboarding of new customers and automated wealth advisors, and into healthcare, with coaching services for patients with long-term illness. Chatbots will not be taking over the world any time soon, Beccue said. Advances are being made in understanding language, “but AI will continue to be challenged by the context of human speech.” (Consider this statement: “I would kill for a cookie.”) For now, at least, the trend is toward seamless handoffs from bots to live agents when the task, or the language, becomes too difficult for the bot to handle – and back to the bot when it makes sense. The goal, in these early days of the era of the smart machines, Beccue said, is for “chatbots to live in harmony with live agents.” The roundtable featured a real-time survey of the webinar attendees: Nearly a fifth of the respondents, or 18%, said that bots are a major priority (supported by funding and executive buy-in) and 37% said they are important but still require a business case. Almost half, or 45%, said bots are not a priority at this time. None of the attendees has been using bots for more than a year, but 6% have recently launched their first wave to deal with customers, 27% have begun testing in one area of the business, another 10% are testing the business case and more than half, or 54%, are starting to investigate how they can use bots. When asked where chatbots are now being deployed at their companies, 36% cited customer/member service, making it the leading application. IT help desk/tech support accounted for 15% and selling in digital commerce 13%. Please use these links to access the roundtable and EIS resources about chatbots and AI. Finally, here are details for the upcoming one-hour roundtables in the chatbot series, all live at 1 p.m. (Eastern) and recorded for later access: April 12 – The Role of Intelligent Virtual Assistants in Healthcare: How virtual assistants can help solve the “adherence gap” and more May 10 – How Financial Services Organizations Are Using Chatbots in Customer Service: Going beyond basic banking transactions to meet the needs of new audiences June 7 – Conversational Commerce and Virtual Sales Assistants: How the age of the virtual sales agent is changing the face of commerce To register for any of these webinars, contact Sharon Foley, at sharon.foley@earley.com About Earley Information Science: Earley Information Science is a specialized information agency. We support business outcomes by organizing your data – making it findable, usable and valuable. Our proven methodologies are designed specifically to address product data, content assets, customer data and corporate knowledge bases. We deliver governance-driven solutions that scale and adapt to your business as it grows. For more information, visit www.earley.com. #####

The Expanding Role of the Chief Data Officer

Feb 28, 2017

It’s a time of increasing influence in the C-suite, but only if the CDO connects the dots by showing how data can add business value, say experts at Earley Information Science roundtable The chief data officer is one of the newest arrivals in the C-suite. The title didn’t even exist until Visa coined it in 2001. But with the increasing importance of data analytics to all businesses, more companies are bringing CDOs on board – there are now about 2,000, according to the Gartner Group – and their roles are expanding. Their impact varies, however, as debates swirl over governance issues, often leaving data on the sidelines, stuck in silos. Meanwhile, many companies don’t yet see the need for a CDO, and make do with their chief information or chief technology officers. But while CIOs and CTOs are essential to keeping the lights on in a company’s data infrastructure, and to provide safeguards against cyberattacks, a strong CDO has a singular role to play in harnessing the power of data to increase business value, according to a panel of information management experts who participated in an Executive Roundtable discussion hosted on Feb. 22 by Earley Information Science (EIS), a leading consulting firm focused on organizing information for business outcomes. “Data is the new oil, fueling everything in the virtual world,” said one of the experts, Seth Earley, Chief Executive Officer and founder of EIS. “Simply put, it provides the competitive advantage.” And it is the CDO who is best positioned to turn the spigot on to fuel that advantage, he added. Governance is certainly needed to organize and deploy the mountains of data that companies accumulate about markets, products and customers, Earley said, but the term is off-putting and CDOs often don’t help themselves by being too abstract and becoming mired in minutiae. “So don’t call it governance,” he said. Instead, “weave governance into the process and tie the data to metrics and key performance indicators to focus on the right things.” – Business objectives and strategies that are important to people in the company. In short, “cut through the noise and the distractions to get to the value.” The roundtable discussion, “The Evolving Role of the Chief Data Officer: Increasing Influence in the C-Suite,” was led by David Hatch, Senior Vice President for marketing at EIS. Besides Mr. Earley, the panel included Mark Nance, CDO at American Fidelity, and John Nicodemo, Global Leader, Data Quality, at Dun & Bradstreet. “Everything we touch turns to data,” said John Nicodemo. “The volume and velocity of data is overwhelming – instead of insights, the result can be more chaos.” The CDO’s goal, “is to find the truth among the silos, to pull together the disparate data across the entire enterprise,” and not to get stuck in the mechanics of the process and lose sight of the business value. As important as the CIO and the CTO are, it is the CDO who can help solve business problems, said Nicodemo, adding, “The CDO role is really a vocation, to connect the data with the rest of the organization.” But the CDO can’t do it alone, said Mark Nance. “It’s all about change management.” On one level, it is a top-down effort supported by senior executives, but it is also about, “lighting a grass roots fire, with all hands on deck.” The data ecosystem has to span all business units, so that the entire company becomes, “data aware and data driven.” Data needs to be used as a weapon, Nance argued, in order to capture market share, drive organizational improvement and produce, “actionable insights,” that will raise revenue, cut expenses and enhance customer engagement. The CDO will have to employ some form of governance to make all of this happen, but not one that is bureaucratic in nature, the panel agreed. “Regulation has to be natural – all about the business and doing the right thing,” said Nance. To innovate, you can’t be locked down. “You need some freedom,” he said. “But not the Wild West.” The CDO’s job, Seth Earley said, “Is to get the right people to the table,” focusing on the right metrics, and to turn data governance, “Into business as usual.” That means the CDO, “Has to be more than a cheerleader. Mechanisms have to be put in place.” The roundtable featured a real-time survey of the webinar attendees: Nearly half, or 46%, said that there was no CDO role at their organization. Just 12% of the participants’ companies had a CDO in place for more than a year. Another 19% had recently defined the role but hadn’t yet filled it and 23% were using other executives to do the work. When asked about the significance of data to their organization, 29% said it was critically important (driving almost all decisions and outcomes) and another 29% said it was important (affecting major decisions and internal and customer-facing operations). At the other end of the spectrum, 19% said that innovation comes more from market trends and 6% said that data played no role in decisions, process innovation or customer interactions. In terms of the top-most goal of CDO/data initiatives, there was this ranking: revenue growth (48%), efficiency gains (21%), innovation – new products or services (17%) and risk/security/compliance (10%). Use this link to access a recording of the roundtable. And here is a related article on digital governance. About Earley Information Science: EIS helps organizations establish a strong information architecture and management foundation to drive strategic business outcomes and enhance operational performance. EIS has more than 20 years of experience in working with Fortune 1000 organizations globally across many industries. Corporate headquarters are in the Boston metropolitan area with consultants working on projects around the world. For more about Earley Information Science, visit our website at http://www.earley.com or contact us at info@earley.com.