The Role of AI in Healthcare: Reducing Burnout & Improving Access

Hello, friends. Welcome to the podcast Transforming Stress with Dr Ash. And today we have got a very special guest. We are now moving into a new landscape of artificial intelligence, AI. And AI is transforming all the fields and especially healthcare. And we are seeing the changes, obvious changes coming. I'm really grateful to have with me today Dr. Sachin Zunarkar, who is the founder and CEO of two companies, Fieldviewers and HealthLink. And Sachin's work is at the intersection of telemedicine, of medical devices and diagnostics and artificial intelligence. How inspiring and how he's bringing these three different streams together to create his unique vision. Suchin's vision is that doctors anywhere, patient anywhere. And this is not some kind of idea. This is born out of his own journey, his own inspiration. And what inspires me most about this gentleman, that he has he has gone through a lot of challenges to come to where all we all know that there are bureaucratic challenges, system challenges, and his own journey. So please welcome Dr. Sachin Junarkar. Sachin, really grateful to have you here.

Absolutely, Dr Ash. I do appreciate the opportunity to talk to you and talk to your audience regarding my humble experiences that I have had throughout life and what brought me to founding of two companies, Fieldviewers and Healthlink. And HealthLink does business as a Velify platform. We take pride in calling ourselves World's First Synchronous Diagnostic Telehealth Platform. And it's a mouthful, nevertheless. it does summarize the vision that you outlined that doctors anywhere, patients anywhere. And we connect those two most important entities when it comes to healthcare delivery.

Sajin, what inspired me most about you, you know, when we spoke first and you told me about your journey, which was full of stress, with your with your daughter, you mind sharing with the audience that how this vision was born, because many people in the United States, all over the world, find it sometimes very challenging to access health care. And some sometimes it is not the right just the right health care, but it is the right health care at the right time.

You actually nailed it right health care at the right time. And the personal journey that or the personal experiences that I have had are not unique. They are very common. We have been through a very historically significant era of COVID, starting from around 2019 all the way up to 2022, 2023. For many, it's a blur, and for many, it's an experience of a lifetime. So for me, that was the time when my daughter, now she is 11, a very healthy kid. Back in the days, she used to have allergies, real bad dust allergies. Very common to have allergies in kids that young. Which was more often than not in the middle of a night. Either I am on a business travel, my wife who's supporting throughout my this journey has supported me very well through her steady job and my entrepreneurial ventures. taking care of a little kid was a big challenge. And more often than not, due to these vising issues that she would have, episodes she would have in the middle of the night, more often than not, we would rush her to ER. And at some point, I started thinking about this. as to, and I'm not a medical doctor, to be honest with you, I'm an electrical engineer by training, and I looked at this problem as an engineering problem more than a medical problem. And I started thinking as to when we rush to ER, what is the doctor's what is the doctor doing? They're sticking a pulse oxygen monitor on her finger, they're listening to her lungs, and before she was given a treatment of albuterol or any other inhaler that would open up her wind pipes, they needed to listen to her lungs. A very simple step that we actually identify a doctor with, their stethoscope. They listen to the lungs, they listen to the heart. And doctors such as yourself, you guys are well trained in diagnosing just by listening to the heart, just by listening to the lungs. I don't know what you guys listen to, but you guys know what's exactly going on with the patient. And I looked at it as an engineering problem to solve. I did not need to drive eight miles, nine miles, ten miles in the middle of a night to go to the ER just for that one step. And out of that was born an invention that's now patented. We call it Stethocape. And I have it here. I know you had asked for a demo, which we can eventually we can.

I've also got my stethoscope because I want to show you something. but why don't you show and then I'll share something very interesting with you.

Yes. So I don't know if we can do a full-scale demo now. We can possibly schedule a full-scale demo after. Later we can always do it later. Later we can do that. but it's a very simple device that plugs into your phone. It's got the very well-known chess piece that you know your probably your chess piece is much better than mine. Nevertheless, we have a chess piece that couples to the phone and it couples to the phone's either an opt the acoustic port or the microphone port. We have both options. And our app, the Velify app, essentially does the signal processing necessary to bring those auscultation audios to a person who can make sense of it. We can't make sense of it yet. We'll get to that eventually, but it is brought to the earpieces of the person who can actually listen to it, who needs to listen to it, who needs to figure out what to do with that patient as a result. And that's the doctor. So the doctor is the central point of healthcare delivery, and we at Velify we keep the doctors at the center. They are the most important entity here, of course. The patient is to whom you're delivering the care, but you need to have all the information necessary anywhere, from anywhere. The patient could be anywhere, you could be anywhere, and just through a click of a button, you can connect with each other. That's the beauty of it. And it's no more just a mere zoom call, as I would call it. The telehealth consults are simply currently as they exist are zoom calls, and we are changing that. And the way we are changing that is through stethocape tech, which is patented, and autocape. AutoCAPE is currently not in production yet, we are still in prototype stage. but that's another piece of the puzzle. And young parents will identify with it. even we as a generation who is immigrated to the countries such as UK, US, we identify with it because our parents were aging, right? Care delivery to them is a challenge, and these devices solve that. not hundred percent, but majority of the cases. the autocape lets the doctor see into the patient's ears, nose, and throat remotely. And this device is a simple attachment to a phone, so very inexpensive device that goes and attaches to the back camera of the phone. And we are using the phone as a medium that everybody has nowadays. There's about, I don't know, last I checked, about seven billion people on the planet, but there's more than seven billion phones on the planet.

Yes, yeah, right. It's something like eight million, eight million.

Yeah, it's it's insane. It's like you have more than one 1.2, 1.3 devices per capita, and that's insane. And we're using that as our medium, as our medium to get the diagnostics information to the doctor. And what that does to care delivery is it democratizes it, it makes it very inexpensive because that's one of the bigger pieces. you're not gonna tell a person whose you know monthly income is probably hundred dollars a month to buy a two hundred dollar device so that the doctor can listen to their lungs. That's not gonna happen. So we have an inexpensive device that interfaces with the phone that anybody and everybody has these days, and make the healthcare delivery possible. So that's the beauty of it, and we take pride in this invention, and we take pride in the fact that we were shortlisted by the world's largest telehealth platform called East and Gilney, which has about 900,000 doctors on it, delivering care to the patients, the remotest places in India. They're delivering care to the patients where it's needed. and the doctors may be sitting in AMS hospital in Delhi, and the patient could be in the remotest part of Mizoram or Assam in the Northeast, and the East Engine platform connects them. And we are proud that East Engineering Platform shortlisted our devices to be part of this platform. So we take pride in that. We are platform agnostic, the devices could be interfaced with any platform. We have our own platform, Velify. and we believe the sky is the limit in making this delivery possible, the healthcare delivery possible.

Sachin, first of all, really heartiest congratulations for doing such an inspiring work. And you are really teaching the world this new system. I rem I remember the word doctor, it comes from the Latin word to do to dossier, which means to teach. And we are educating here and we are bringing newer systems. As you mentioned earlier, that there are challenges sometimes in getting the right healthcare at the right time. And you talked about the you talked about the device, stethoscope, and with telemedicine, you are able to speak to a patient in a remote place with Zoom call or any other platforms, and then you have got this kind of devices. And only just a couple of days earlier, a friend of mine they got a new stethoscope, which has taken it to a different level. Is that there it is connect it can be connected to an app, and that app has got AI integration that it can make sense of those sounds and give you the top diff mostly the top differential diagnosis as well. Now, this can be a life changer, a game changer, especially in places and in situations where the access to the healthcare is limited in terms of in terms of life-threatening conditions. So, and I know your work is also at the intersection of AI, medical devices, and telemedicine. So, really, wow, what a fantastic work you have done, Sachin. heartiest congratulations for that.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for saying that, and I'm glad you bring up AI. So, in addition to a doctor listening or a nurse practitioner listening to the auscultation audios, we have products in the pipeline where we are integrating AI to do the differential diagnosis, or I would say a diagnosis assist, because we don't want to take the healthcare provider out of the picture. They are still the if you will, the last word on the diagnosis. But we assist them through the AI. And there was an NIH-funded open source study that we are leveraging, it's called HeartWise. and we can share a link in your podcast later on as to which study we are referring to. And this is if there are engineers listening, I would appeal to them that implement this into your apps if you're developing healthcare apps, and our stethoscope can easily interface with it. And we have to deploy this at a large scale. As a company, of course, we want to make money in doing that. Nevertheless, we also want to make sure that the technology is unleashed at a larger scale, and we want to use open source platforms to do this. We have open sourced the some of our technology, and part of that is this AI tech that was developed using NIH funding. This is National Institute of Health funded the study called Heartwise. And the algorithms are open source, why not integrate it with our tech? And this, I believe, will be a game changer for countries like India, countries like Pakistan, Sri Lanka, where healthcare delivery and Nepal for that matter. I was invited in one of the Nepal telemedicine conferences. these South Asian countries you got the tremendous talent, you got doctors, you got engineers, and you need essentially to marry and connect these dots to make the healthcare delivery deployable at a large scale. East and Juni platform I mentioned is already doing that, and a technology such as this would essentially transform the healthcare delivery. And it is already doing it, and it the future is really bright. Very optimistic about it.

Great, great. Sachin, the other thing I want you to speak about is the massive amount of stress which is in the healthcare. You know, studies after studies over the last five, six years have shown that 50 to 60 percent of the healthcare professionals and doctors are burnt out, they're facing symptoms of burnt out. Patients and their families are also having similar challenges. There's more than 50 billion cost of clinical and medical negligence. So, how the work you are doing and the integration of AI in the healthcare can depressurize both the systems, and it's a kind of a win-win-win situation across everybody. The doctors, all the healthcare professionals are also depressurized with all the latest things which are coming in the AI, and same work you are doing for making things and life of patients and their families easier because it's all about patients and their families, isn't it? It's all about patient empowerment. Ultimately, it's a patient's body and they should have full control. And so I would love for you to speak about how AI in the future can bring those changes. And I know you've already touched upon a few of the things, but on a larger scale, what are the possibilities you look at?

That's that's an excellent point. And this would be preaching the choir when I talk about stress, and you've written a book about it, and Boiling Frog. So it yeah, boiling frog, and it's if and it would be teaching a choir here, but nevertheless, I'll try to chime in with my two cents. so the AI, the way I see it, help the doctors. Doctors and patients again are the two most important persona in this. The tech is here to help, and we come from the tech side. and how we can help in reducing the stress, how AI will help in reducing the stress. And I can talk about that for a few seconds here. So if you were to just map a journey of a doctor and a patient in just an in-office consultation scenario as it happens today, and as it used to happen 20, 30 years ago. I don't remember seeing my doctor back in India again, being on a computer when talking to me or when examining me. And now, and there was a personal dialogue happening, there was what's happening in your life, what happened at school today. why are you here? It's just that personal dialogue. in today's world, when these consultations happen, first the doctors are pressed for time, they're stressed because they're doing significant administrative tasks, which for good reasons they're there. nevertheless, the doctor has to do it either themselves or use help and use technology. So note-taking is one definite place where the AI is changing, and medical transcriptions have already changed that significantly, where you have just the audio recordings being transcribed either through human intervention or through tech into soap notes and what have you. in addition to that, where AI is playing a role is looking at the patient's history and some of these drug interactions, for example, who which may or may not have been recorded into the electronic medical record that the doctor is using for that particular office in office consult, but the patient has those data. Now, integrating and collecting all that data into one central place and making the patient the custodian of those data and make those data available to the doctor during the telehealth consult or during an in office consult, giving sort of a dashboard of what's happening with the patient's history. those are a few things that currently Very manual, and more often than not, doctor has to do that, doctor has to go seek that information from the patient. Sometimes even patient may not remember what happened two months ago. Now, all of that is changing now, the AI is changing it. The interoperability standards are changing it. Now, through HL7, through FHIR type of standards where different EMRs can talk to each other, the data could be aggregated. And at Velify, we have taken a stand that the data is owned by the patient. It's patient's data. They should be in control and they should not through the fault of their own be able to provide it when needed. Sometimes it just doesn't happen. The doctor doesn't have all the information available to them. Going back to missing some part of the history, missing some part of and a misdiagnosis as a result, right? It's not the fault of the doctor, it's the system. It's the system that's not helping or giving all the information that the doctor needs to make that informed decision. And all that is changing as we speak. And to a large extent, many companies, some of them are competitors, they have done a far better job at making this available. One of the things that I do see that they miss, and everybody is hungry for data. As a company, we are hungry for data as well, but we still want to we make the patient the owners. We make the patient the owners of the data. And that's the difference between our competitors and us.

But patients are patients and their families are empowered.

Are empowered, absolutely, absolutely. Absolutely.

What kind of challenges you've had so far, Dr. Suchin, so far in dealing with in dealing with this landscape.

So healthcare is a field that is actually in terms of tech, in terms of EMR, it's extremely saturated. there's many players and everybody brings value, everybody adds value to this you know ecosystem, and everybody is there for a reason. nevertheless, the interoperability of various systems has been very challenging. There have been efforts made by many players, and Google is one of them, to make that interoperability the central plea piece of where multiple different systems can talk to each other, and that was one of the challenges. and then also do this in a medical-legal way, making sure that the data is secure, the data complies, the data exchanges while at rest, while in transit, comply with the HIPAA laws in the United States, for example, because we are a US-based company, we have presence in India as well. making sure that we comply with the laws of the country where we are operating it. And that has been as a as a small startup been challenging. It's a capital-intensive process to make sure you are medical legal, and nevertheless, you need to you cannot ignore that piece. and you have to make that a focal point while you're focusing as a techie, you're focusing on technology. so those were very challenging in the beginning, but we figured it out. We've got good as advisors who helped us out in making sure we are HIPAA compliant, we are medical-legal, and all that good stuff.

And your vision, Dr. Sachin, about doctor anywhere, patient anywhere, transcending the geographical locations. So, what are the regulatory challenges in this? And how do you transcend these challenges?

That's an excellent question. And there the laws are very strict as far as the United States is concerned, for example. the laws are very strict. You have to be licensed. So, assuming let's say patient is in the state of Texas, and you're a doctor who's examining that patient through telemedicine, the law requires that you must be licensed to practice in Texas. And that's the law, and you have to abide by it. tech or well, if even if the tech enables it, for you to see a doctor that you're not licensed to practice in, no. That's a big no for us. we geofence the location of a doctor and a location of a patient. So whenever we are saying doctor anywhere, patient anywhere, it comes with a caveat. You have to be licensed in the state that you're offering cats. yes. And the same is true for any other country. India has its own laws. you're in UK, I'm sure UK has its own laws which have, and we are currently not present in UK, so I'm not too familiar with the laws there. Nevertheless, you have to abide by those laws while offering the care anywhere, patient anywhere and doctor anywhere within the boundaries of the state. and the technology exists today to make sure that geofencing could be done.

Geofencing could be done. Could be done, yes. Yeah. In the future, that might be there might be more possibilities with that.

Yeah, absolutely. And the laws would have to evolve in order for let's say connecting a doctor from India to a patient in the US. And of course, the nothing stopping the patient from talking while in the US, talking to a doctor in India, nothing stopping that from happening. Nevertheless, which laws govern that particular interaction? That's a gray area. so currently VGO offense in a sense that we don't make that possible unless the doctor is licensed to practice in the US. In the Texas In Texas, yeah, when it yeah, in a given state, wherever the patient is present.

Where do you think we are moving with AI and predictive health? Like before, for example, let's take the example of sepsis or missed diagnosis. We discussed that medical negligence claims are more than fifty billion in the US alone, and how by early diagnosis, early detection, that's one area. The other areas, as you mentioned earlier, by decreasing the cognitive load of the healthcare professionals. Because as we know that when we are very stressed, we are thinking our thinking automatically shifts from the type 2, which is systematic thinking, to type 1 thinking, which is much prone to error. So are you working in this area about the AI protocols improving and picking up the diagnosis much earlier?

Yes, absolutely. So, like I mentioned with the strethocape device, for example, we empower the patient with the device to be able to auscultate themselves at home. nevertheless, the patients are not trained to listen to the heart and lung sounds. Even when I listen to the heart and lung sounds, I have no idea what I'm listening to because I'm not in, I'm not a medical professional. but what I do know is that the quality of the signals that we capture, the quality of signals that we make available to the doctor, is excellent. It's it's by far comparable to the acoustic stethoscope. And what happens then, right? So, what happens to all that data that has been collected? So NIH had this open source platform where they did heart-wise study where you could essentially do this differential diagnosis within the tech. So the AI can listen to the heart sounds, lung sounds, and detect whether there are murmurs, detect where whether there is an arrhythmia, detect whether there is wheezing, and alert the patient proactively for any abnormalities that have been detected using the algorithm. The algorithm, of course, cannot make the diagnosis. That has to be the doctor's job at a point where the patient raises that flag, but it is proactively monitored, it is predictively diagnosed, if you will. and I shouldn't say predictively diagnosed because the algorithms don't diagnose, but they will raise a flag for a doctor to diagnose. Yes, and this will help with the stress that the doctors otherwise would face. And the way that would do well that would reduce the stress for a doctor is they're not you know, so now you have some sort of a triaging happening in the tech before the doctors get involved. And this triaging will help in reducing the workload for the doctors themselves. and it could be done in office setting as well as it in a telehealth or a remote patient monitoring type of a setting, and it's been done by multiple players already. So it reduces the cognitive load, as you mentioned, on the doctors, on the healthcare providers, as well as it puts patients in charge of their own health, that they can proactively reach out when needed and not when it's too late.

No, thank you, Sachin. Thank you. And also I have noticed that you have done a lot of work in the field of radiology, radio diagnosis and imaging, and would love to know more where AI has moved in that direction.

That's that's a topic very dear to my heart. So Fieldviewers is a company where we make X-ray and gamma ray sensors, which are used in radiology. And so we don't make our own X-ray and gamma-ray systems yet, anyway. nevertheless, I've had a significant portion of my career spent in X-ray CT, positron emission tomography, single photon emission CT system development. And I have seen the field very closely. I have many friends who are radiologists, and a burnout is a real problem when it comes to radiology. And this is where AI kicks in. And AI does a phenomenal job in picking up anomalies through MR images, through X-ray CT images, through ultrasound, and alert the radiologists of the anomalies that they would otherwise have missed, not through the fault of their own. it's just that you're looking at about 150 to 200 cases a day, it's only human. The cognitive bias is gonna be there, deterioration is gonna be there. But for AI, that's not a problem. It's 24-7, the exact same mental strength, if you will. Yes. And it's gonna pick up, and it is already picking up tumors as small as less than a centimeter, and which would otherwise have the radiologists would have missed, not through fault of their own. It's just that the images are noisy, the images are not as great as they could be. now, anyway. The tech has I mean, the companies have done a phenomenal job, don't get me wrong. They have done a phenomenal job in put pushing the systems which are state-of-the-art with a tech that they had at that point in time. But the tech has come and FieldViewers is doing a phenomenal job in that, where we are bringing in X-ray and gamma-ray sensor tech that can only improve these images going forward. But imagine what could happen when you have AI that is picking up stuff from images which are as good as they could get with the tech that was of the 20th century. Now we have 21st century tech in the sensor arena and 21st century tech of AI. When they these two marry, it's the future is amazing. Future is bright. Great, great stuff.

You know, Sachin, you really hit the nail on the head there that AI doesn't get tired, doesn't make much mistakes, there are no cognitive biases. I remember one of my professors of medicine say that the biggest enemy of the biggest enemy in clinical medicine is variance. You know, that's why healthcare is a very complex industry, because human beings will be affected by all the factors. simple thing like sleep can have a such a massive effect on a day-to-day functioning of an individual. So that is where I feel that AI can usually iron out this way variance if it's not going to replace healthcare professionals and doctors, but as a tool, as a thinking partner, as the other things AI could do, I feel we have just begun, and really the sky could be the limit. Absolutely, absolutely.

And as Sundar Pichai put in one of his keynotes back, I think in 2022, 2023, when AI was just beginning, and he compared AI to the invention of fire. So, what fire was hundreds of thousands of years ago, that's what AI is of today's era. And all the possible industries that we know of, and industries that doesn't don't even exist today, will be impacted, and healthcare is going to be one of the first ones that will be revolutionized and that will be changed in our lifetimes.

So where do you th where do you think this is going? Let's say ten years from now, what can the landscape look like?

Oh well, if I had a you know crystal holler you could look into, I think the future is going to be phenomenal. You're going to have longevity increase so much. I mean we've the life expectancy used to be not very not even a century ago. It used to be what 50, 60. we've gone up to m almost 80 now. so the life expectancy is going to increase tremendously because of the revolution happening in healthcare. it's not just happening in the delivery, it's happening in the medicine, it's happening in pharmaceuticals, it's happening in surgery, it's it's everywhere. You're gonna have the best of the best surgeon, neurosurgeon, his or her capabilities available to the remotest part of the world through robot who's kind of replicating the abilities of the best neurosurgeon. That is phenomenal. That kind of future is just amazing. And this robot is not gonna get tired. This robot is gonna work 24-7 and do the surgeries with the capabilities of the best neurosurgeon in the world. And that's just the prospect of that. It's mind-blowing. It's mind-blowing.

Dr. Sachin, I was I got a little distracted because when you said this that the future is going to look phenomenal. I just I wanted to share a quote with you, which I was trying to find. And it's by I think it's an ice hockey player, as far as I know. and he says, I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.

Wow. Wow. That's so cool.

So the puck is going to go with the AI, and people who are going to embrace it in healthcare, in and in other specialty, in other any other field, are going to thrive as compared to as compared to not embracing it and going through all these challenges and all the stress and the burnout. But it's really truly joyful to get these amazing insights from you. One thing I know we are coming to the end. One thing you would like to share with the listeners about your journey, about your vision, what you have to what you have learned, if you want to crystallize it in a few points, I would love to share love to hear your insights.

Oh well, I would love to give only one message, and that is that of an optimism. to anybody who's listening, the future is going to be phenomenal, no matter what field you are in. And look at AI as your friend, not as your enemy. And embrace it like you mentioned a few seconds ago. Embrace it with both your arms and use that technology. It's what Prometheus did with fire thousands of years ago. That's what AI is today. And use that to your advantage, use that for making this place better, making humanity better. And that's that's the only message I can give to anybody and everybody who's listening. And we're doing our own small part in that through Velify and through field viewers, and we think the future for both the companies is bright, and we also think that the future in general for humanity is just bright. And I listened to one of the podcasts not too long ago, and the message that and this was I think Dr. Peter Diamendez, he said, don't die of stupid reasons for next 10 to 15 years. Don't die of stupid reasons. So stay alive for next 10 to 15 years, and you might have reached an escape velocity. So think about that.

Absolutely fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. Well, Dr. Sachin, it's been a real joy and a pleasure to have you at Transforming Stress with Dr Ash. You've given a lot of unique insights how doctors, how healthcare professionals, how patients and their family can embrace this to transform their stress. And what you shared about Peter Diamond is that stay long enough to see the magic. We are moving in a very, very, very good direction. I'm excited, I'm inspired. And would you mind if I put the links of your companies for the for the listeners to reach out or learn more about you?

Absolutely, please do. And of course, if any listeners here, if they ever want to reach out, please do share the links with both my companies and the email address is support at thehealthlink.com. We would love to hear from you. We would love to get all the encouragement that we can get. We would love to get advice, and we would love to love to get your support.

Thank you so much. This was a pleasure. Thank you, Dr. Sitchin. And as in Ireland we say, until we meet again.

Until we meet again, Dr Ash. This was a pleasure, and I thank you. I can't thank you enough for this opportunity. This was really great. And I'm very welcome, friends.

It's a pleasure, the pleasure is all mine.

Thank you. Mine too. Thank you so much.

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