Artificial Intelligence (AI) is finding its way in various industries and uplifting their service capabilities to a great extent. The healthcare industry is no exception to this. While AI is still in its early days in getting adopted in this sector, it has already shown significant prominence in healthcare research and applications. Evidently, AI has the ability to bring drastic changes in the healthcare industry due to increasing availability of healthcare data and rapid progress of analytics techniques which are further empowering both medical teams and patients. Revolutionizing the traditional reactive methodology to healthcare, AI offers a proactive, predictive, and preventive approach. For instance, computer vision-based image recognition can provide more accurate and cost-efficient imaging diagnostics. Likewise, if used properly, AI can scientifically improve patient outcomes through a more personalized and data-driven approach. AI can utilize more granular “small data”, enabling the smartphones and wearable to work as powerful, at-home diagnostic, and treatment tools.
Similarly, as our behavior directly affects our health, low compliance with disease prevention and disease management recommendations have become a global and cross cultural challenge. According to the Council for Affordable Healthcare, in the United States alone, non-compliance with chronic disease management recommendations leads to about 125,000 deaths per year and accounts for 69 percent of hospitalizations. From a disease prevention perspective—84 million Americans, 63 million Europeans, and 493 million Chinese have early-stage diabetes (pre-diabetes). Today, Diabetes is the #1 cause of heart attacks, stroke, renal failure, blindness, and non-traumatic limb amputation. However, around 80% of early-stage diabetics do not comply with recommendations related to healthy living.
Incorporated in 2014, Sweetch is a clinically validated mobile-health platform that utilizes AI to significantly increase patients’ engagement and compliance with essential health promotion and chronic disease management recommendations through Just-in-Time Adaptive Intervention (JITAI).
Promoting Healthier Life Habits and Better Adherence to Chronic Disease Management Recommendations with Sweetch’s AI Engine
According to Dana Chanan, the CEO of Sweetch, increasing compliance and adherence with health promotion and disease management recommendations has greater impact on public health than any other improvement in specific medical care. Sweetch’s AI-powered Behavioral Intelligence Engine is designed to work in real life through converting millions of data points originating from a patient’s smartphone and other connected devices into contextual, hyper-personalized, just-in-time, just-in-place recommendations. These recommendations target healthier lifestyles which include activity, weight management, diet and nutrition management, as well as disease management elements like medication adherence, patient-reported outcomes, treatment protocols, and patient education. As a flexible and holistic Patient Engagement Platform, Sweetch is currently deployed across several disease domains including Cardiovascular and Metabolic (Diabetes, Pre-diabetes, Obesity, Post-Myocardial Infraction, and Atrial Fibrillation), Oncology (Breast and Prostate Cancers), and Autoimmune diseases (Rheumatoid Arthritis and Inflammatory Bowel Diseases).
In a recent clinical trial conducted by John Hopkins, Sweetch achieved a patient retention rate of 86% and clinically significant effects on Hemoglobin A1C reduction, weight loss, and increased physical activity. With its fully automated AI-based technology, Sweetch enables high flexibility and seamless customization to different use-cases and disease domains with easy deployment across customer types and geographical areas. Its B2B client base come from the US, EU, and APAC regions which include pharma companies, insurers, healthcare providers, and self-insured employers who are seeking to improve clinical outcomes and reduce preventable costs.
Establishing the Path to Success with 3 Key Elements
Moving ahead with its game-changing personalization approach together with its unlimited scalability and an industry-focused business model, Sweetch leadership team relies on three elements:
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- Continuous Improvement of Deep Tech Advantage: Sweetch’s highly experienced team continues to mature its advanced Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics algorithms for delivering just-in-time adaptive intervention (JITAI). Sweetch’s level of dynamic and personalized patient engagement model is setting a new bar for hyper-personalized interventions.
- Providing Highly Attractive Business Model: Sweetch encourages outcome-based business model. The “No outcomes, no incomes” business model ensures that every dollar spent by its clients and partners is utilized to bring a tangible value in terms of both clinical outcomes and cost reduction perspectives.
- A Unique Data Asset: By integrating patients’ behavioral data, patient reported outcomes, biometric measures, treatment adherence patterns, and clinical outcomes, Sweetch builds a unique data asset that doesn’t exist today. This data asset has significant implications on chronic disease prevention and management, as well as future drug development.
CEO’s People-focused Approach, Promising Best Product Development
When asked to share her leadership responsibilities at Sweetch, Dana asserts, “Leadership by definition is complex, you have to balance between many factors to be able to lead towards success.” Dana further explains that her prior extensive years of experience in the field of behavioral change enabled her to tackle such complexities by focusing on people. She uttered, “It is all about the people—having the right team will ensure best product development being able to deliver the most appropriate experience to your end-users that best fit to your customers’ needs.”
Dana emphasizes on bringing the top professional individuals and ensures that teamwork empowers them to enhance their capabilities. In terms of improving Sweetch’s offerings and gaining the ongoing understanding of the market needs, Dana strives to develop close personal and professional relationships with key industry leaders and top healthcare institutes. Similarly, on the patients’ front, Dana believes that direct and ongoing patient involvement from day one is crucial for precise solution characterization and the only way to promise the solution truly bridges the needs of end-users.
