Eric Smith shares how Memorial Hermann Health System is revolutionizing healthcare delivery through responsible AI implementation. Learn how their pioneering governance model ensures technology enhances rather than replaces human connection, while improving operational efficiency and patient outcomes across one of Texas' largest health systems.
Eric Smith, Chief Digital Officer, Memorial Hermann
Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT Live
Welcome 0:01 Welcome to Digital Health talks. Each week we meet with healthcare leaders making an immeasurable difference in equity, access and quality. Hear about what tech is worth investing in and what isn't. As we focus on the innovations that deliver. Join Megan Antonelli, Janae sharp and Shahid Shah for a weekly no BS, deep dive on what's really making an impact in healthcare.
Megan Antonelli 0:30 Hi, welcome to digital health talks. I'm Megan Antonelli, and today we're exploring the intersection of artificial intelligence and human centered healthcare with Eric Smith. Eric's the Chief Digital Officer at Memorial Hermann, and he is working on pioneering work in responsible AI governance and digital transformation, and it's setting new standards for how technology can enhance, rather than replace, the human elements of healthcare, from innovative AI solutions to mentoring the next generation of health IT leaders. Eric brings a unique perspective on balancing technology technological advancements and compassionate care delivery. Hi, Eric, thanks so much for being here today. Hey,
Eric Smith 1:07 Megan, thanks for the opportunity to be here. Looking forward to the conversation today.
Megan Antonelli 1:11 Yeah, I'm excited. We've worked with so many of your colleagues at Memorial Hermann, and been down had health impact down at the Texas Medical Center a number of times. So it's exciting to be able to chat with you and to hear a little bit about the work you're doing now tell our audience a little bit about you know how you ended up at Memorial Herman and your journey to healthcare technology leadership, sure,
Eric Smith 1:34 probably a little bit of a unique approach. So I am not a traditional healthcare career person by trade. So I actually spent the majority of my career in healthcare and in financial services. So it was one of those I probably saw myself mapping out the rest of my career there. I enjoyed it, great challenges, great opportunities, but like anything else you get, that phone call that makes you pause and think for a little bit. And I think the thing for me that probably triggered it was we're all consumers of this product called healthcare. And you think about all the things that you know, whether it's scheduling, whether it's showing up, all the forms you have to fill out, you think of the things that, gosh, there's an opportunity to fix that. And so the more I thought about it, the more I talked to the great folks here at Memorial Hermann and met the team one there was a really strong emphasis. It was part of their overall strategy, a digital transformation. And so I joined the team and been here ever since. And so our team has all of our really patient, facing engagement platforms, from you know, our app to messaging Contact Center, as well as our data analytics, data science and informatus group. So we've assembled a team here over the past four and a half years since I've been here, but it's been great, lots of challenges, but lots of great opportunities. Well, and you can see the impact that you make every day. Yeah?
Megan Antonelli 2:57 Well, it's all, we're all about impact here at health impact. So I love that, but it's, you know, I think the, you know, we always hear about finance and how finance was so far ahead, and the data exchange and we could go to any bank machine, get our money and access things, and that, that comparison is always made. So I'd love to hear a little bit about, you know, what that was like, you know, going to that transition, you know, from from finance to healthcare. Yeah,
Eric Smith 3:21 it was a little probably eye opening at the end of the day. To your point. And I think a lot of it had to do with maybe some of it has to actually do with competition, which sounds like an odd word in healthcare, but you know, where I came from, the financial services space. I think if you look at other industries, whether it be hospitality, etc, I mean, there's competition, and so your emphasis and your focus on the experience of that consumer can be a differentiator. You clearly need all the back end to work as well. But I think a lot of it has to do with the way you show up, and the level of what we know about you and how we show up every day. Knowing about you makes a difference. And so I think in healthcare, you know, I think we're, there's a lot of technology catch up that's been happening. And I think now we're kind of at that point where, hey, we really need to think about that patient as a consumer, because they have choice at the end of the day, right? They're going to go where the least friction exists to go address what they need to address. And our opportunity is to create, I think, that really engaging experience for them to where they'll be more of a proactive participant in their health, as opposed to just being reactive, like I'm sick I broke my arm or something, right? So how can we get them on a better path for wellness, proactive wellness, as opposed to just dealing with the reactive piece, which we clearly need to build very good experiences there. But I think that's our biggest opportunity to even, you know, not to be too optimistic, but to shape the way things are happening in healthcare
Megan Antonelli 4:51 today. Yeah, no, it's interesting. If you think about money, you know, we care about where our money is, and we think about it often one way. Think that we would be engaged in our health in the same way, you know, but a lot of that is the transparency and the ability to see it right, and to know what's there and how it's moving and if it's going up or down. And now the technology is there for us, you know, like, I know my aura ring, not to give them a commercial or anything, but any of the devices I have lots of them. Apple has allowed me some transparency into that. That has changed my behavior almost passively, without taking too much of a sort of aggressive role in managing that. And I think that all goes back to a lot of its data. And of course, now, with this advent of AI and artificial intelligence, which we've been talking about so much. You know what is? What is possible is truly coming to to that place, and whether it's human centered around the care or patient centered. But tell us a little bit about what you guys at Memorial Hermann are doing and in that space, on
Eric Smith 6:00 the AI space, yeah, yeah. So a number of things. So I think the way we've looked at AI just holistically is definitely around. I think there's a lot of conversation around whose jobs are going to go away and get replaced with AI. Obviously, a lot that appears in the press that will, you know, make folks think that and have concerns, expressed in that space. But I think the way we've approached it within Memorial hermit is we see AI as a companion to support not just the providers and the clinicians, but actually also the patients as well, right? So a lot of the work that we're doing right now is, what can we do if we take a look at the problems to solve in your world every day as a provider or as a clinician, nurse, etc. What are things that are administratively heavy? What are things that you take time that maybe impacts your your home life because you're charting at night? And so where do we have opportunities to actually apply some of these capabilities? So it's less about I've got the solution. What problem can I solve? But instead, let's look at your daily life and start to peel some of those things back. So a couple of things that we've been working on, ambient listing, which you hear a lot about, but it's really been impactful for our providers. And we have a large pilot going on right now where a provider can come into a patient's room, have a conversation with him or her, and they have a app on their phone that they sit down, they express to the patient what it's for, and then they just have a normal conversation, tell me how you're feeling, etc, and the application then essentially charts the details of that visit, if for both the provider to put into the chart, as well as a summary for The patient at the end of the day. You know, the early feedback we're getting is for some of our providers, it's saving them an hour to two hours a day in charting. But the interesting thing was, when we talked to patients about it, they love the fact that my doctor was actually looking at me and wasn't turned filling out the forms and filling out the documentation that he or she needed to fill out, and so they felt a better connection with the patient or with the with their provider at the end of the day, which is fantastic. So it wasn't about being scared of the AI. They saw it then as a hey, this is actually helping our interaction. So
Megan Antonelli 8:14 yeah, now, and we've been talking about that for a long time. I mean, I think of the graphic right, with the with the physician facing the computer and the patient there, and, you know, and even in some ways, the pandemic, and I know you mentioned how you started, kind of during the pandemic, and how all of that, you know, so much of that changed, but even the way that you and I are talking now, compared to how this used to be, even four years ago, right at the beginning of the pandemic, when zoom, you know, it happened, and we would be on teams or zoom or whatever, and have those conversations. But now the way that we engage with it is different, because it's become such a more normal part of our our existence, right? I mean, for me, certainly, 90% of my meetings are this way, as opposed to on the phone now, and for the physician and the provider to be connecting that way, naturally, as opposed to literally going through a checklist while the provider is facing a computer. It just engages people totally differently, you know. And I imagine the nature of the conversations even have changed,
Eric Smith 9:14 yeah. And I think, you know, those kinds of capabilities and so that we're doing some things with video interaction with a nursing platform that we've been piloting as well in one of our facilities, to where there's a virtual nurse that's available. It's an actual nurse, but that nurse is available through a virtual interaction, basically on demand in a patient room. So you think about the immediacy of being available, whereas before I hit my call button and the poor floor nurse that's, you know, running up and down because he or she has several rooms that they're accountable for, and maybe they're in the middle of, you know, taking vitals or whatever. Now you've got basically on demand access to somebody to answer a question, and maybe just to be a voice of, you know, interaction, because maybe I'm concerned, or whatever. And so. So I think, to your point, you take the zoom that we're on right now, that level of uncomfortable with the video interaction. There are times when I want somebody physically there, because maybe I need a handheld, but there are times when I just, Hey, Megan, I got a quick question, can you help me understand this? Or when are my labs coming due? Or winter, when's dinner coming? You can have that level of interaction, and so it provides a level of comfort for patients,
Megan Antonelli 10:24 yeah, because, you know, and it's a lot of like being in a hospital, it's lonely, it's scary, and to know that, you know, you can have access, and it's not just, you know, sort of ringing a button and hoping that they show up and having it take a long time. So the responsiveness, you know, that experience has really transformed. So it's amazing to see. And I think, and as you said, it over the benefit outweighs that sort of fear of, you know, kind of, am I not getting the right connection that I need? But there is, of course, some sensitivity to it. I know that you guys have your governance, a governance council in place. What are some of the things that you know, you guys are working on in terms of, you know, ensuring responsible tech innovation and adoption. Yeah,
Eric Smith 11:11 we actually, you mentioned our AI governance council. So we actually stood that up about a year ago, and we stood it up because obviously all kinds of opportunities for leveraging and exploring AI were coming at us. And when you think about all the folks that all the gates that you would have to go through in order to get that approved, or at least review, it was very episodic, as far as who I was able to connect with, and did I get all the right folks, all the right touch points happening with the right folks. And so we stood up this AI governance council, and we started off really establishing what I would consider to be a kind of our core framework, and that was around our policy and how AI could be used within our system. So that way we had clarity. It was also around our review processes. So what are the kinds of things we wanted to make sure that we asked about any AI that we were exploring. So we developed a pretty extensive checklist. But also, where do we inject that AI review in existing processes today, whether it be security reviews, contract reviews or technology review processes? So that way, we weren't doing yet one additional process that would have created red tape, but instead, we could inject that into things that already existed today, and then the last one was around education and communication. So how do we educate our staff about the capabilities of AI? But just as importantly, how do we educate our staff on how to have a conversation about AI with patients, so how to be transparent about it, how to let them know that, look, this is a tool to aid in your care. This isn't to replace a nurse. And so really, those kinds of talking points, and then obviously communication, just letting our teams know what's going on, and even externally, some work we're doing. So our initial team kind of started with that framework and really establishing those those core elements. And then what we've done is we've expanded that to we've got specialty work groups, we've got a clinical specialty work group, a consumer and patient experience work group, and what we'll call an operations work group. And what we have are we have subject matter experts in each of those areas. You can imagine, clinical we have nursing, we have physicians of different specialties, and then they're augmented with our data science leaders, our privacy legal and technology teams, so they'll do kind of the nuts and bolts review, but really, we're looking for those in the clinical space, for example, to where, if you're a cardiologist, Would you feel comfortable with the AI, doing the following things, making, maybe not making decisions, but would you be comfortable with the results? And then we also look for them to be advocates for that those capabilities across different committees. So instead of just it happening in one area, why shouldn't we be deploying this across all of our hospitals and all of our clinic clinical sites? So that's been very successful. We're running several of our opportunities through things that we want to pilot, and we're also retro look retroactively, looking at the things we already have in production today, to make sure we're documenting them and to make sure we've covered all the right bases. So,
Megan Antonelli 14:16 wow, that's great, I mean, and there must be a lot of learning that comes from that too. I mean, I think you know, AI, because it, you know, it's not new, but it's sort of newly, very exciting, and everybody is talking about it, and there's always a lot of fear around that, and fear about job loss, or fear about, you know, lack of human connection. Where would you say, in those, you know, with those committees, that, you know, the learnings have come in terms of kind of balancing that, particularly with the staffing side, right where you've got maybe, you know, certainly, we've seen nurses, you know, striking and concerned about, you know, replacement versus, you know, augmentation. What's the you know, what is the general consensus? And. Are you seeing some of the you know, whether it's a surprise or the points of learning? Yeah, I
Eric Smith 15:06 think so. One thing is, I think, because of the fact that when we were very purposeful about the folks who brought to the table to be part of this council, and also the work groups to where, I think the great thing is, because we had so many voices at the table, everybody could hear everybody's voice, right? So you heard from our equity, diversity and inclusion folks about concerns they may or may not have, obviously, from a technology standpoint, what the implications are there our security team, our contracting teams, etc. So I think the the hesitation or the concerns that folks may have had in their respective silos. I think a lot of those get addressed in some of these conversations, and there's some good aha moments. So I think it's seen overall. I kind of mentioned this early on, is less of a threat, and I think folks are seeing this as, hey, you know what? There's a way we can go about this to test and learn safely, and, you know, to make sure that we're we understand what the potentials are, and we can make sure that we put the right guardrails around either use cases or maybe looking at this going, this may just not be the solution for us,
Megan Antonelli 16:15 right? Yeah, that's great. I mean, I think that you know where the enhancement and the augmentation and the companion tools come in. And now, you know, we talk about the agents and all of that for for the nurses and the physicians. It's so different from how, you know, EHR was maybe deployed right. Here it is. This is it. You weren't involved. And now it seems like most, most health systems in the country are engaging their clinicians in the implementation and and where should it be deployed? You know, yeah,
Eric Smith 16:47 no, exactly, and that's they bring. And even we have those positions, even in some of the other and the nursing teams as well our nursing leaders in some of those other work groups, just again, for their perspective, especially on things like patient and consumer engagement potential opportunities, because they're the ones that are likely going to hear about it, right? So I've got some doctors on my team on the informatics side, and they'll tell you every day that they'll go into a patient appointment, and for the first in a 15 minute appointment, for the first five to seven minutes, they hear about parking and how hard it was to get in, which has nothing to do with the appointment, and why they're there clinically. So it's important to understand from them the kinds of questions that they may or may not get, and they can kind of bring those things to the table. So I have found it very beneficial to bring those voices forward, because it really helps us dig in and understand and again, that's part of having broader perspectives as we as we learn through all this together. Although
Megan Antonelli 17:45 parking is a unique challenge at the Texas Medical Center,
Eric Smith 17:50 I will not argue with you one thing, you have some special zones,
Megan Antonelli 17:57 if I recall, yes, but that's yes, no, I hear you in terms of the so getting back to impact, and kind of, where are you seeing the, you know, sort of measurable impact and sort of positive outcomes. Are there, you know, sort of programs or implementations that really stand out, and how are you going about, kind of doing that evaluation?
Eric Smith 18:17 Yeah, so, you know, it's kind of back to the problems we're trying to solve. So I'll give you a couple of examples. I mentioned the the ambience, where we're doing the the ambient listening, we're seeing positive results, one from patient feedback, which is definitely something we pay attention to, but also provider feedback and just the time saved, as well as opportunities, potentially to bring in another appointment or two during the day, because access is always a conversation topic. And so I think we're seeing positive results there, even in our pilot. Couple other things that we've that were we actually have in production today. One of those is a voice bot that we use for patient outreach. And so a couple of problems we were trying to solve there. One big one was just, there just wasn't enough staff to do the level of outreach we needed to do for things like patients that are discharged to home from our emergency departments checking to make sure that, you know, because we're obviously trying to prevent readmissions. And so if the patient was sent home, we obviously want them to get a primary care appointment as a follow up, and then for those patients that were prescribed medications, were they able to pick up the prescription from a pharmacy? And so we were doing that before, especially as COVID. During COVID, we were doing that with manual folks. Some of us even signed up to make those calls, because it just wasn't enough nursing staff to do that. So we actually built a voice bot on a piece of technology from a company called grid space that actually does the outreach and is has a very conversational interaction with the patient. And if they have not scheduled their primary care appointment, why? So do they not have one? Or they need assistance with one, and then if they did not pick up their prescription, i. Uh, the the technology that voice bot asks why, and then we capture that, and that gives us follow up then so and we think about the number of phone calls for a hospital system that's got as many hospitals as we have in a city of Houston, in the broader metroplex, that's just a lot of people that we need to reach out to. So we're making, probably, on a weekly basis, four to 5000 calls that historically would have been done with people. So, you know, one, we're making the calls that we wouldn't have made otherwise, but we just have staff, and then we're actually getting patients connected with with primary care providers. In a lot of cases, we're finding medication gaps to where patients can't make it to a pharmacy, or they can't afford it, and then we can connect them with our community benefits team.
Megan Antonelli 20:44 So, right, yeah, I think that's probably the area that I hear about, that I get most excited about, which is just the stuff that we couldn't do before, you know, because there's just so much low hanging fruit that wasn't, you know, it's just too hard to operationalize. And the you know, at the end of the day, the revenue code around it doesn't, you know, barely exists, you know. And so there might be a downstream implication of finances for sure and or risk. But ultimately, the the money to pay that person to do that you know, wasn't there. And so now this, this automates so much of it. And frankly, you know, whether it's, you know, colonoscopy prep or whatever, all the you know, those those calls, they you know, you didn't expect them to be your physician, and they weren't necessarily the highest level customer service. So if they're automated, it's okay, it it's done, especially
Eric Smith 21:40 if, I mean, there are a couple things that we do with any of this technology. We make sure that the voice bot, her voice, comes across as a female. So she announces herself as part of the virtual care team, and she explicitly states that she is a voice or virtual care assistant. So we're transparent there, but she sounds very conversational, and when you listen to some of the calls, we have patients. We have one patient that spent six minutes describing what her experience was like, and the voice bot just listened and said, Uh huh. Well, thank you, uh huh. And captured all that. So you think about some poor person that would have been on the other than the phone looking at their call is going, I've got 50 more calls to make. And you know, right?
Megan Antonelli 22:21 Well, just that alone. I mean, if you think about the the measured impact of that, right? I mean, just time saved and all that it is, it is interesting and and kind of crazy. I mean, and it, and the way the technology is just getting better and better. I mean, I've heard some of the, you know, just the podcasts that people are starting to put together, and it's, it's crazy, and it will get to the point where we can't tell the difference in many cases, you know, so good or bad, but you know it there's that when you talk about loneliness in healthcare too, and fear and all that, that just talking to someone helps, whether it's a real person or not sometimes. So yeah, I mean, I think
Eric Smith 22:59 there's an opportunity to build that concept of a care companion that's with you. Companion that's with you all the time. I mean, you think about, we were talking about banking earlier in our conversation, the fact that I can pick up my phone and look at any point in time and understand my balances, where my money is going. There may be a day, and I would love to see a day when we have that option to where somebody has a virtual care companion to where, whether it's through chat, whether it's through voice, they can ask questions, and, to your point, maybe just have a conversation or express some concern or fear. But again, I think to the point of, you know, where do we what's the marrying point between efficiency and the human centricity, always having that opportunity to escalate to a human to where? If it's like either the technology, the AI recognizes that Megan's not in a good place, and I need to connect her with somebody that can really dive deep, right? Versus, you know, just the opportunity to have an engagement with, with, I guess, a thing at the end of
Megan Antonelli 23:54 the day. So, right, right? Yeah, no. And what about, I mean, to that extent, you know, it's not all pie in the sky. It's certainly not all easy. What are some of Have there been any kind of, either unexpected challenges or kind of those big, like, Aha moments where you're like, Okay, wait, this isn't gonna work. Yeah,
Eric Smith 24:12 I think a couple of things. One is, we still run into situations for around explainability, because I don't think any of us feel comfortable, especially in healthcare, in healthcare with a black box, and so making sure that, especially as we work with some of these early stage companies, and exploring their their platforms and their solutions, really making sure that there's a level of explainability there, that they have, that we can also then feel comfortable with. So I think that's one area. I think there's still a little bit of the, what's going to be the true return on this? What's the benefit I'm going to get out of it? For the cost? I think we were also for, again, some of the earlier stage companies, but also as we take a look at because AI is not cheap, as far as the compute that's required on the back end. And so we. Understanding what the true cost is, and then being able to, as we, as you, kind of mentioned early on, what's the true return that I'm getting. And it could be that, it could be outcomes based, it could be financial based, whatever. But I think we've seen scenarios to where the cost is a little bit cloudy. And, you know, I can't really go to my CFO and say, Trust me on this one, I feel good about it when you got spin operating margins, right. So, so there's got to be an element of predictability around the cost. And I think we continue to see some challenges in that space so
Megan Antonelli 25:32 well that, you know, and it is. It's like healthcare so slow to change, but as soon as we do, we want to see an ROI,
Eric Smith 25:40 100% and officer, our CFO, will tell you the same thing. I mean, and that's fair, and that's what we really have to look at. And that really goes back to, you know, we talked earlier about just the problem to solve, and so making sure that we're aligning those, less about, again, shiny objects, and more around true problems that we're trying to address. And so some of the things we're really targeting and we're looking at AI is, how can we actually go address those? Because a lot of those come around, cost reduction, outcomes improvement, etc,
Megan Antonelli 26:08 right? So what are you in looking at the programs, whether they're starting to deliver that ROI or they're just, you know, you can tell they're they're really working. What are some of the ones that you're most excited about right now. I
Eric Smith 26:21 think really, the ones that have been you mentioned earlier, the low hanging fruit. I think that the patient facing solutions are just, they're they're easy because of the fact that you can do a pretty quick offset. But also we're seeing one of the other things, we're using some of our patient engaging AI for our voice bots and also messaging based is just for to help patients action things like annual wellness visits and other gaps in care. And so with these technologies, we're actually seeing lift in those areas. And so I think that's one that we're excited about, as far as what the opportunities are, and continue to build on that. Because if we can get in a regular routine to where we're using those kinds of platforms to solve those needs, again, very low hanging fruit, but gives you very positive returns and very easy to measure. So yeah,
Megan Antonelli 27:12 I think that, yeah, a lot of that in terms of the just easy, easy to measure and high impact is really amazing around kind of putting your forward looking glasses on, and sort of, what's the you know, what do you think? You know we're sitting here? You know, this has all happened pretty fast with the pandemic. And then, you know, sort of virtual care. And then obviously that, you know, with the advent of the large language models and the acceptance of AI, and now it's just kind of part of our general dialog. As you look to two years from now, five years from now, what do you think, you know, what are we going to be talking about? Then, where is, where is this going to go, in terms of how AI and human centered care really, you know, kind of converge,
Eric Smith 27:55 you know, I don't one of the things that that I realized in healthcare, and I think a lot of that I saw as in financial services, that industry does a very good job, and definitely in other industries that are very consumer centric, is really empowering or leveraging the data to empower consumers. And so I think that's one thing we have not done. There's this incredible trove of data and information that's sitting in our EHRs today that could help you manage your health better by taking actionable steps and really guiding you along the way. I think that, to me, that's very much a next frontier toward how do we take all of that and not only empower the provider, instead of having to go through and read 10 years of a chart summary, being able to summarize and say, Eric has been doing well in his weight management. He's doing well in this he's been taking his medications, but this, this area he needs to improve on, right maybe exercising a bit more based off the feedback he's given the past three or four visits, being able to have that in summary, right in front of the provider, to where I can now have a very informed conversation as a provider to a patient, I think is huge, but I also think that's do it that's empowering, also from the patient's perspective, to where now I'm going to give you actionable steps on things you do. So I give you nudges each day in a channel that you will respond to. So not everything may show up in your mobile app, but instead, you respond a lot better to nudges via text, because it's your it's in front of you. You're looking at it all the time. So our ability to understand and have the AI understand what actions you best respond to with which modalities, coupled with all that data on the back end, I think that in the next, you know, hopefully less than five years, but I think we're going to see some huge advancements in that space. Yeah,
Megan Antonelli 29:46 I mean, it really, it is amazing to see, you know, just the sort of leapfrog that we've had in terms of, you know, sort of real, the right care at the right time, and then the personalization piece of it, right? That customization. And to give people what they will respond to. Yep, exactly. Well, I think that's a great place for us to to close, unless you had any, you know, world pearls of wisdom you wanted to share, or, you know, kind of advice for those kind of embarking on that journey, you know, today.
Eric Smith 30:17 Yeah, no, I think you know, if there's any, I don't know how much wisdom I would call it, but maybe lessons learned. So maybe, you know, a few skinned knees here and there, but I think first and foremost, don't be afraid of pilots. I think it's really helped us learn. I would say at the onset, invest the time up front. Nobody. It's not sexy. Nobody likes it, but the whole governance process, especially given where we are from a regulatory standpoint, there's a lot of ambiguity there. So as a system, you getting in front of that to be able to establish that with the right set of players at the table, will help you, I think, do the right level of analysis to where you can you can experiment and learn, but also have the infrastructure in place to actually scale. But the last thing I would say is, and the thing we found is, you could pilot yourself to death. So figure out those problems to solve, find those technologies, pilot them, but get them out the door. Because I would tell you, are your employees, and all of our patients are looking for that, and they're expecting that at the end of the
Megan Antonelli 31:18 day. So both at the same time. Don't be afraid of pilots, but, you know, be wary of those that maybe go on too long and get, get, get the answers you need at the right time, Right exactly. Well, thank you so much. Is really, I really enjoyed speaking to you today, Eric. It's, it's great to see that the work that you're doing, and you know, it's just such an important part of you know where healthcare is going in terms of this human centered, you know, AI applications. So thank you.
Eric Smith 31:48 Thank you. May I enjoy the conversation Absolutely,
Megan Antonelli 31:50 and I want to thank our audience. You know, please feel free to reach out to Eric and to myself with any questions. And you know, join us in the future on digital health talks. This is Megan Antonelli signing off.
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