The underlying technology relies on sophisticated AI models. “At the bottom of the stack, there’s speech recognition. And really, no doctor out there knows how to pronounce all the different medications for the chemotherapies out there,” Rao admitted. “Our challenge is to recognize all the ways they say these words, the symptoms, the medications, the diagnoses, and the procedures.” This requires robust natural language processing capabilities to ensure that the AI can accurately interpret and transcribe complex medical discussions.
Rao, who also has a background in venture capital and investing in healthcare technology, shared his perspective on the industry’s adoption of AI. “I used to be an investor for a large healthcare system, and we started a machine learning in healthcare program where my co-founders and professors at Carnegie Mellon were also working on these kinds of technologies,” he recalled. “These last four years, especially in healthcare, I think you’ve got to this is technology that is just absolutely unprecedented.” He believes that AI is not just a tool but a fundamental shift in how healthcare can be delivered more efficiently and affordably.
