High Quality, Low Cost HealthCare Video Interview Series: Dr. Ivana Schnur Explains Sense.ly’s Remote Assesment Hub

Last week, we heard Lou Caputo talk about tracking hand hygiene data to keep patients safe from infection.  This week, Ivana Schnur, M.D./Ph.D., Founder and Chief Medical Officer at Sense.ly explains Sense.ly‘s Remote Assesment Hub.

Last week, we heard Lou Caputo talk about tracking hand hygiene data to keep patients safe from infection.  This week, Ivana Schnur, M.D./Ph.D., Founder and Chief Medical Officer at Sense.ly explains Sense.ly‘s Remote Assesment Hub.

Dr. Schnur has a background in clinical psychology and virtual reality and has extensive experience in
the design of clinical protocols, clinical user interface, application of virtual and mobile
technology in the group or individual clinical settings.

Sense.ly  is 7 crucial components combined into one post-discharge platform:

1.Mobile notification system

2.Online clinical protocol engine

3.Mobile assessment and tracking center

4.Mobile clinical data entry (sensors, devices)

5.Visual progress mapping

6. Compliance and motivation engine

7.Telemedicine portal

From the website:

“Sense.ly is a virtual online nurse equipped with a set of remote diagnostic tools. Using speech recognition, augmented reality, and medical devices, Sense.ly can quickly assess a patient’s condition and provide caregivers with relevant insights for meaningful follow-up.”

Sense.ly is available on mobile, web or TV and will maintain the patient/provider relationship from initial pre-screening, through appointment follow up, to continuous care management.

In speaking with Dr. Schnur, she further described Sense.ly in the following way:

Watch and listen as Dr. Schnur explains further about Sense.ly.

Video transcript (by TranscriptionStar):

Joan:  This is joan justice from HealthWorks Collective, and I’m here today with Ivana Schnur, M.D. Ph.D and Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer at Sense.ly.  Dr. Schnur has a background in Behavioral Medicine, Virtual Reality and Clinical Artificial Intelligence.  Sense.ly has developed what they call a remote assessment hub using speech recognition augmented reality and medical devices.  A nurse avatar quickly assesses the patient’s condition and relays it to the provider.

Sense.ly is available on mobile, web and TV.  Dr. Schnur, tell us a little bit about your background and about how Sense.ly got started and how it works?

Dr. Ivana:  Well, thank you Joan.  I’m a medical doctor as well as clinical psychologist.  Most of my research I have focused on medical compliance and quality of life.  And when I met some of my mentors that were really into virtual reality and tools that would help patients to increase their quality of life.  I got a little sidetracked into how the technology can really be an assistant, and help in the medical arena, and that’s how Sense.ly got started. 

The reason we have found that Sense.ly was my cofounder Adam Odessky was to really look at the problem of medical compliance and motivation in chronic care.  Lot of the diseases that are chronic in nature, the most difficult issue is to keep is the medical protocol, and Sense.ly allows you to not only follow through with what doctor ordered, but also motivates you and keeps you up-to-date.  It also has the capacity to alert you if something is not quite right or alert your clinician.

Joan:  Okay and how exactly does it work?  How exactly does it work, it’s an avatar, correct?

Dr. Ivana:  It’s an avatar and it’s much more than an avatar.  So it is a platform that is mobile and based on in the cloud.  What the doctor does is when you discharge from the hospital it enters the protocol, and what they want to follow, so it could be a blood sugar, it could be the days of your sobriety or emotional status, and that creates a dialog, the platform creates a dialogue that the nurse avatar or your coach or your friend or buddy then delivers to you via Smartphone or a TV or a tablet or just a computer asks you what you know they need to know.  We also have a capacity to then for the avatar to do exercises with you if that’s what you need.

Joan:  Oh great.

Dr. Ivana:  And then we bluetooth, it kind of gathers information from home-based diagnostics so the glucose monitor or the Kinect or just the interview, and maps it into graphs, alerts you if something is not quite right or alerts your clinician.

Joan:  Okay and Ivana how does Sense.ly improve outcomes and reduce costs?

Dr. Ivana:  So Sense.ly’s main focus is medical compliance, and medical compliance was the post discharge or chronic management regimen is directly correlated with saving cost saving in the medical arena.  It is the non-compliance with what doctor prescribe that usually leads the patient to emergency visits or readmissions or exasperation of their care be diabetes or badly rehabilitated knee or relapse in addiction.  All this can be prevented or at least helped by the compliance that Sense.ly will help you with, so the fact that it can follow you, it can show you what the direct impact of your non-compliance as on your condition it can also alert the clinician when you’re right at the moment when you are non-compliant, and the clinician has the capacity to immediately either contact you or changed tweak their regimen that is what really saves them time and money because you don’t then get readmitted or the patient doesn’t get readmitted with much worse condition.

Joan:  Yeah.  I see you can check in daily with this nurse avatar and if something comes up your provider can be alerted and you can take care of it.

Dr. Ivana:  Right.  So not only that the provider will be alerted, but we can actually talk with each other so I as a doctor can talk to you the same way as we are talking now or with the nurse, and take care of the things that can be taken care via telemedicine and save the rest for the face-to-face visit.

Joan:  Yeah.  It’s great.  And what has the feedback then so far?  You’ve been doing some pilots, correct?

Dr. Ivana:  Yes, that’s correct.  We have two pilots ongoing right now, one in Saint Mateo Medical Center where patients are using Sense.ly for rehabilitation after knee surgery and shoulder surgery.  Rehabilitation is a very long process and most of us that had the experience of sent home as the sheet of paper where is [stick man] [0:05:32] exercises on them and even if we are the type of people that are very compliant and do those exercises there is no guarantee that you’re not over exercising or under exercising, and therefore creating more damage.  So what Sense.ly does because it has the capacity to hook in with the Kinect.  It makes sure that you’re doing your shoulder and knee exercises just right.

Joan:  Okay, it does them along with you?

Dr. Ivana:  Yes.  It does them along with you and talks to you and again helps with the motivation.  The feedback so far has been really very encouraging, but we’re cautious because we don’t have the data or analyzed the qualitative feedback the patients love the fact that they don’t do it just by themselves that the avatar can do it with them, and that they know that they’re doing it right.

And then we have another pilot with them in Santa Cruz in addiction agency where Sense.ly is really helping some of their patients to stay compliant, and with some of the less fortunate ones that end up in the local Santa Cruz jail it allows them to continue their mental care with their provider even while they are behind bars.

Joan:  Yeah.  Thank you so much Dr. Schnur for joining us and telling us more about this really interesting product.  I would definitely use it.  I think it sounds great.  And you’re — you launched today, correct?

Dr. Ivana:  Yes we are.

Joan:  Okay, congratulations and thank you so much.

Dr. Ivana:  Thank you.

To see other videos in this series, please go to this page.  And if you have a story to tell that can reduce healthcare costs and raise quality of care, please comment below or email me at joan@socialmediatoday.com  Thanks!