{"id":6717,"date":"2023-11-26T08:31:05","date_gmt":"2023-11-26T08:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/innovationisrael.org.il\/en\/?post_type=article&p=6717"},"modified":"2024-08-13T07:43:57","modified_gmt":"2024-08-13T07:43:57","slug":"what-does-doctor-ai-say","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/innovationisrael.org.il\/en\/article\/what-does-doctor-ai-say\/","title":{"rendered":"What does Doctor AI say?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
After a challenging career in the IDF’s Unit 8200, Ronen Lavi retired and left the army at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He describes developments related to obtaining information in the world of intelligence from the beginning of the cyber era until his retirement as “a dramatic, maybe even traumatic process”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lavi describes how intelligence personnel encountered copious amounts of diverse information, much more than humans can cope with: “We understood that because there is so much information, we fail to separate the wheat from the chaff and provide decision makers in the field with the relevant information”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
About ten years ago and after forming a think tank to address this issue, a new unit was created with the aim of establishing supportive decision-making systems for all types of data. Lavi was appointed Head of the R&D Division: “We understood that if we want information to keep pace with decisions, it is necessary to remove the human factor from the process and introduce a machine”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The extraordinary systems developed by the unit, won them the Israel Defense Prize. “We went from being hunters of knowledge to data gatherers with the aim of improving the decision-making process”, says Lavi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When he reached retirement age, Lavi decided to recruit his longstanding friend and partner from the unit \u2013 Shay Perera, an AI expert. The pair made a clear decision: to progress from the world of cyber to action based on the accumulated knowledge which has a genuine impact on people. Lavi and Perera quickly identified the healthcare sector. Their startup (Navina) was established by Lavi in 2018 who serves as its CEO while Shay Perera is the company’s CTO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Lavi explains, the unique feature of the medical world is the incessantly increasing quantity of information, while the decision-making process has remained unchanged for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After conducting a field study, the two realized the need for healthcare to be more proactive, accessible, and efficient in order to be cost effective. On the other hand, they also understood that the best area in which to make the change was family medicine \u2013 precisely because this field is considered to be at the bottom of the economic food chain. This was because economizing operations and processes in family medicine can dramatically reduce the system’s costs by saving time and hospitalizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lavi explains that the understanding of preventative medicine’s importance also applies to the US market. A situation whereby a family doctor has only ten minutes to talk with the patient, acquaint himself with his medical history, and diagnose and treat him is precisely the point to introduce technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Unlike a doctor who doesn’t remember what happened six months ago, technology does remember”, says Lavi. “Navina says: I will give you a tool to get to know the patient, his medical history, and the latest tests. The system takes all the information in a patient’s medical file and informs the doctor of all the important data in the form of a user-friendly clinical profile of the patient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“In this way, every visit will become more accurate and effective, leading to better quality treatment. The result is overall satisfaction \u2013 for the patient, physician, health system and insurance companies. Navina helps physicians provide better healthcare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Providing physicians with tools that they can’t do without is our vision and our biggest challenge”, Lavi continues. He explains that the product’s development is being led by a large team of doctors that has been working closely from the outset with other physicians from clinics in the US to tailor the product to their specific “challenges”. The result is a solution which the physicians view as having value on a daily basis. Indeed, Navina’s usability is especially high compared to the competitors, and as of now, is used by thousands of physicians in the US. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lavi describes the physicians who participated in building Navina as genuine partners who joined them in the trenches from the very beginning. Thanks to the thorough understanding regarding the needs and difficulties of the end clients \u2013 the physicians \u2013 one of the company’s sources of strength is its high level of usability compared to that of Navina’s competitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the problems that characterizes the American healthcare market is the significant lack of order pertaining to information located in the local health systems. Using AI technology, Navina’s system can successfully identify documents, read a scanned text, distribute the relevant codes of medicines etc. \u2013 and integrates them into a clear picture: the patient’s metrics, the drugs he uses, and results of his lab tests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Our product is very actionable”, Lavi explains. “We know how to give the physician reasoned clinical information and to place it within the relevant medical context. It is not enough to show him that the glucose level is high \u2013 you need to give him a context. That’s the reason we outshine our competitors who provide information in a summarized rather than updated form”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n