Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us on Signal and Symptoms podcast. I'm again very grateful to Ed Marx to join. Enabling secure, self-determined health data sharing and consent management. And this is exactly what we're going to come to the main topic of today is that like when we talk about AI directly, DTC to patients or patients in general, you why do we need physicians apparently? So we're going to go ahead and talk about this. How do we do consent management better? as we talked about last time, that we're moving from, we move from paper charts to digital charts, and we're gonna move from digital charts to AI charts. And we are gonna see this essentially a problem in adoption. And then the five years look very different as Ed is gonna talk to you about both. And I'm gonna let him speak a lot today about how things are gonna go in the future. I really wanna learn from you that in your 20 years of experience, you are one person that I know for sure that really led what we call digital transformation and large interviews.

I do believe that this whole AI, and I call it Concierge AI, will do to transportation, you know, what Uber and Lyft have done. And it's totally blew it up, right? And I think we're gonna see the same thing happen. It's different than Dr. Google, because Dr. Google is very limited. The tech wasn't very advanced, and there was just a few people that were really into it, would show up at the physician office, you know, and be expert in their own mind. But it was good to empower the patient. They should, I think.

I would think as a clinician that you would appreciate that. know my wife appreciated when they had some knowledge of what was happening. So I think the game, it's different. So, you know, a quick analogy, and I know it's not the same as medical at all, but in terms of, you know, the whole framework, if I'm not a programmer, and I think you've already talked about, Junaid, where you could go in, and we all know these stories where someone doesn't know any programming, and within an hour, they could program something that used to take a year. And so it's just amazing tool. We all know the power. We've been talking about it. Everybody knows.

So why can't the same thing happen and disintermediate the way traditional healthcare delivery models are today? Obviously, I don't foresee anything in the near future for sophisticated care, but for primary care, we're already seeing it with symptom checkers, right? A lot of health systems already have online symptom checkers that are incorporated with their portals and I can already tell, I don't need to come in or, maybe I should come in or hey, watch for these symptoms and then I can come in. It's already sort of disrupting traditional model where I would immediately go to urgent care because my throat is sore for over three days. But now I got the symptom checker. It's basic stuff, but it's getting more sophisticated. So I've been testing these models myself, but I think back, Junaid, I'll just tell two stories to make my point. I think everyone knows I had a prostatectomy a few years ago. And what happened, I had a good physician, he followed best practices and following best practices, yeah, it's talked about in one of those books. So he followed best practices and by time they realized that I had a real significant issue, stage seven, which is different, you know, the way they do prostate cancer, but essentially stage three cancer for what everyone typically knows is the four stages.

And so I only had one alternative. Now, if I had AI, because I'm doing this now, I would have been taking my labs and putting it in AI. And I guarantee you it would have said, because my wife was telling me the whole time, go, you know, get, get a next level exam, you know, a pathology exam so that you can really know because you're a high risk, the markers say everything. And I would have found it at stage one and I would have been able to take some easy medicines and I would have been fine. Instead, I had to go through this horrific experience. Everything turned out fine, but it's still a horrific experience I could have avoided.

First and everything for now, but you are absolutely right. Early detection is one of the key value drivers. are working on breast cancer detection, bleeding, chest X-ray, pneumonia, pneumal parx, TB, because not only that, mean, people have been asking really odd things, right? I mean, we are working on a crucial or a prison guard and we want to diagnose TB because again, it's not just you, you can go to different areas. So you are absolutely right that a number one early detection. I'm glad that you're sharing your personal story. And I truly believe your wife too as well, because some of these things I've been adding into the system. But again, we're gonna talk about validity, accuracy at a later point. % agree with your point that things may have changed if you have access to more technology and you would personally be persuaded to do early testing.

So I'm going to give you two real examples now. I mean, that was a real example that was a person in the past and give you going forward. So I noticed in my annual physical exam, which was July, that I had a marker for liver that seemed to be going up. so my PCP, she's not concerned, but I haven't gone through that prostate process. I said, I want to do another lab a month later. And so I saw an increase. I did another lab month later. She's like, I'm not concerned. Now it's at the top limit. I'm like, no, I've been down this road before. I put it in to my AI and it's like, you need to see a nephrologist. You need to go take care of this. So I contact a nephrologist. It's December before my appointment. Do you think I'm going to wait to December when everything is telling me, hey, go get this checked out? I'm not.

So that's another example where traditional medicine, best practice, I can't get access and I'm gonna get sick, all right? And I'm gonna have cancer or something. So I'm not, and I'm sort of this myself. The other real example, and I did this on purpose just to really test the system. says, same thing, as you know, I'm an athlete and I was dumb. There's a reason why in contracts for football players and other professionals that tells them they can't do these other sports and I was dumb. I did pickleball So it messed up my knee. So I'd go see I got this go see an orthopod now It was a six weeks to see him. It's like I don't have six weeks of my life It's it's too important to me my physical fitness and maintaining where the level I am So I I got the MRI. So that's some of the pushback I get from dogs Well, you still need an order. Okay, I text my PCP I said, Can I get an MRI please? She said, yes. I paid cash because it was cheaper than paying my co-pay, which is another story. Insane. it's crazy. And so I put it in to chat, I mean to AI, and it told me exactly what my problem was, what I needed to do. Now I still kept my ortho appointment, which was, I don't know, seven weeks later. And he told me, he was a great, he told me the exact same thing that AI told me. It's exact same thing and told me my treatment plan exact same. So actually today I'm going to get home today. I'm going to do I'm going to do PRP with my ortho pod. Now I couldn't now AI is not going to do my PRP form so but I think it's going to disrupt about 30 % of health care as we know it today in the next three years. That 30 % mostly primary care type things and it's going to get us to the specialist faster.

So I think it's a message for physicians, for clinicians, for health systems to embrace, not be afraid, not say, you can't do that because, know, we're, or go and try to take a policy or legislative action to keep something from happening, this empowerment from happening. It's gonna happen and people are gonna use it in mass. I'm convinced of it. They're gonna use it in mass. Already it's something like in our research. And again, the changes, the percentages go up every day, 56%, and the New Yorker may have some data in there as well. I haven't read the article yet, as I said. 56 % of people are already using AI for their healthcare at some level. 40-something percent are skipping visits because they're getting what they think they need. Now, is it perfect? No, and we've talked about that some other time or maybe now. Is it perfect? No. Is it all ready for prime time? I think some of it is, but a long ways to go.

But as we know with AI, it's a rapid cycle. It's not like Dr. Google, which could be years and years and years before you get good data out there and trusted sources. With AI, as we know, it's like every day we're seeing improvements. So I think it's coming and I think it's nothing to be afraid of. I think it's something to be embraced. then you work with your, you have to redo your healthcare delivery model is what I think. So that's it. That's what I'm gonna share.

All right on this spot, I'm going to tell you example. SaveLifeAI, I demoed some of the products that are coming. It was an investor meeting and most of my investors are physicians and they're like amazing people. have been doing both introductions for sales and everything. Well, what I ended up doing was that, okay, this is the future. And then I showed it to one of the providers and he looked at it and he said, Junaid, I'm never going to invest in it. I said, what happened? He said, you are literally showing me that, you know,

It's going to replace me. And I said, dude, it is not going to replace you. It's going to empower you as a matter of You'll be able to do more. Not to mention, we need 56,000 more just physicians. We need 12,000 more neurologists. We need 18,000 more radiologists. Are you kidding me? Your reach is going to be better. That's number one. And then number two is, of course, we have to adjust, right? We did adjust. I mean, as a matter of we adjust on a regular basis. Continued medical education is important parcel of our getting licenses in you for about six.

So I would like you to finish this talk today of say, look, I'm going to put a patient hat on and this is what I need to learn. And then I'm going to put a provider hat on and this is what I'm going to learn. Then you have to put a hospital administrator on and then say, and then lastly, just start, you know, that what we're going to talk about, how insurance is going to change sort of overall with this particular model and then we'll close the talk clip.

Yeah. No, the payer part is super interesting as well. But yeah, I would just say like from a patient point of view, start exploring, find out the best AI for you, start exploring and start experimenting. That's what I'm basically doing with the two real examples that I shared is start experimenting. think from a clinician point of view, what I would do is I would start experimenting as well and thinking, okay, look at scenario planning. Like maybe you don't believe anything we're saying. no, you you might be like this. No, no, no, no. Then, okay, that's one scenario, but then open yourself up and say, okay, what if, if, if they're right, like to an extreme, do a scenario and then something in the middle, like, okay, how should I react with my practice, with my profession?

What do I need to learn? What do I need to learn? What skills, like watch our podcast every Wednesday, read our books. So what skills do I need to learn? And then how do I need to read? organize my practice in order to embrace this new wave. if we're right, and again, just three different scenarios, I can't hurt to do it. It's a good practice anyways, gets you thinking. So that's the provider point of view. I gave you the patient point of view. And I think from a hospital point of view, it's the same thing. You need to be thinking about, because that's what hurt me in a way is we knew virtual care is definitely the way forward. There was no reason people need to come in into a physical environment for everything. And so the pandemic, one of the side benefits was we've got this boost in virtual care. Hey, it works. We can take care of patients. Quality is good. Safety is good. And then what did we do? We went back to the old way. It's like crazy. And patients, some patients like it, but a lot of patients don't. And they're tired of it. And that's the other thing. That's why they're gonna embrace this AI. my gosh, now I can take care of myself.

So what I would do is a hospital, you got to do the same thing, the scenario planning, and I would start experimenting, put together a concierge practice that includes AI. So they probably have concierges already, a lot of hospitals do a little carve out, or if they don't, you should do one, and then have some AI attribute to it. That's like an easy way to get into it, and then maybe over time it's all AI.