Sikka’s Practice Assistant Service for Amazon Echo Launches!

 

Evil AI vs. Useful AI. A case for self aware practice

We have heard and seen a great deal of why AI can be Evil. The references in popular movies and literature of the uber conscious and self aware AI doing all kinds of damage because it has grown smarter than humanity draw us to a darker image of this technology. It is my belief that Evil AI is not going to manifest itself for several decades if ever. Instead lets look at more detail at something that is more here and now.
Imagine it is 10:00 PM and before going to bed you ask your practice how it is doing? The practice replies after thinking that it is expecting to make you $150,000 this month, you would have seen 40 new patients by the time the month is over, all scheduled patients tomorrow have confirmed and your accounts receivable is in control. In addition, you are low on some supplies based on your schedule and asks you if you want to order those. In other words your practice is doing OK. Your family will have food on the table and you will be able to take that vacation that you have been planning for so long (OK I realize I may be exaggerating a little bit). This is not science fiction. This is what we refer to as Useful AI. Useful AI as described above is largely possible today and Sikka Software just took a first step and launched a Beta version called Practice Assistant on Amazon Alexa which will also soon be available on Google Home device. You have to wait until you reach the bottom of this article to get more details.
Let’s establish a little bit more context here. You are a doctor and you have a practice that you own which helps you care for your patients and pays your bills. We have focused on retail healthcare so you could be a dentist, orthodontist, oral surgeon or a veterinarian. We will shortly be adding this capability for optometrists, audiologists, chiropractors and more.
Self aware practice (which we also refer to as a self driving practice) per our definition stays away from “meaning of life” type of a debate. Basically we want your practice to help you achieve four major things easily.
A. scheduler monitoring for followup treatments, patients who are going inactive and auto confirmation for patients with capability to smartly fill schedule
B. predictive analytics to help drive revenue to a certain target. We have achieved 95% accuracy in this capability
C. inventory and ordering by auto reading your schedule, your consumption patterns, and order using your favorite distributor
D. insight and recommendation engine to know how to update you based on natural language processing and voice enabled AI technology


This week we launched Sikka’s Practice Assistant Service for Amazon Echo. For the uninitiated, this is Sikka’s second voice-technology product after Sage; our AI-based chatbot that we launched along with our Practice Mobilizer platforms last year. Customers with an Amazon Echo device, and are based in the US, can purchase a Practice Assistant subscription now through the Sikka Marketplace.

Currently in beta, Practice Assistant was designed to facilitate the workflow of dentists and veterinarians during their workday, with human-assistant-like functionality. For the Amazon Echo, Sikka Software now offers two Alexa-specific skills: Dentists can access “Practice Insights”, while veterinarians can access “Practice Assistant”.

Comments