UCHealth runs a network of nationally-recognized hospitals, clinic locations and health care providers throughout Colorado, southern Wyoming and western Nebraska. The  innovative, nonprofit health system delivers the highest quality medical care with an excellent patient experience. With more than 150 clinic locations, UCHealth pushes the boundaries of medicine, providing advanced treatments and clinical trials and improving health through innovation.

Business challenge

Anyone who has interacted with the health care system knows how hard it can be to handle seemingly simple tasks like arranging doctor visits and finding specialists. UCHealth sought to eliminate those headaches, cut down tens of thousands of calls a month, and provide peerless care to their patients wherever they might be.  The goal was to offer easier and quicker information, so patients can focus on the relationships that matter like the ones with their doctors and providers.

Transformation

UCHealth sought to reimagine patient service by introducing a virtual assistant named “Livi” that could help patients with common concerns like appointments, finding their right providers and even learning about managing chronic conditions like hypertension or diabetes. UCHealth worked closely with Avaamo for more than a year designing  Livi through strenuous testing. Eventually, UCHealth was able to get Livi “live” and see how she performed.

Getting Livi to a point where she could seamlessly interact with patients required that Avaamo and UCHealth work collectively to improve interaction and make sure Livi continued to learn from patient interactions so she could answer questions like “tell me about diabetes.” Avaamo and UCHealth monitored interactions on a daily basis to make sure Livi continued to “learn” from her experiences. According to Nicole Caputo, Director of Experience and Innovation at UCHealth, “Going through queries and seeing what people ask Livi has allowed us to better understand the needs of our patients and visitors. Jumping into conversational AI now allows us to learn more about what we need in order to deliver the best experience possible, and also prepares us to be more nimble as conversational AI technology changes and gets more sophisticated.”

Results

Since it’s implementation, nearly half a million UCHealth patients have already interacted with Livi, with a success rate of 97%.  UCHealth patients can now interact universally with Livi across the health care system including through smart speakers in the comfort of your own home. UCHealth’s embrace of conversational AI has set the healthcare system apart from others who have launched virtual assistants for specific tasks only. Livi will go beyond helping patients find a physician, services and health information online – she will be embedded within UCHealth’s mobile app and able to connect patients with their personal health information. 

Most importantly, Livi has allowed UCHealth to better understand patient needs and deliver the best care possible. And according to Caputo, “Bottom line, investing now keeps us from playing catch up with patient expectations in the future”.