by Megan Burns, Director - Catalyst
Project Voice is on a mission to drive global business for voice tech and conversational AI companies. Last month they hosted their bi-annual event in Chattanooga, TN. A curated community of Voice Ai technology founders, leaders and enterprise partners, this 3-day gathering of voice technology visionaries and thought leaders never fails to enlighten the community with relevant technology updates and provide thought-provoking insights. By sharing today’s business challenges and matched with inspirational technology solutions, the stage is set for engaging conversation and true collaboration. And this is one example of exactly what I witnessed unfold on the second day of the event.
Enterprise partner Lenovo, led by Head of AI North America Andi Huels, attends industry events and consistently assembles dynamic panels of technology founders to discuss how voice AI transforms businesses. The highly anticipated panel discussion for Project Voice was titled: NLP At The Edge: How Voice AI Is Transforming Retail, Restaurants & Hospitals.
A week prior to the event, Andi reached out to me to inquire if I knew of an additional speaker to join the panel. Without hesitation I immediately connected Andi to Ken Sutton, Co-founder & CEO of Azafran’s portfolio company Yobe. Yobe’s technology and Ken’s expertise was an ideal addition to the panel discussion. Yobe is a valued front-end partner for platforms that need to capture unique linguistic and biological markers in everyday auditory environments. In turn, Ken introduced Andi to Yobe’s business partner, SoundHound’s Director of Business Development, Darin Clark. Darin joined the panel and conversation too.
Joining Andi, Ken and Darin in the discussion was Van West Founder & CEO Vocalytics.ai and the panel was moderated by serial Tech Entrepreneur, Ian Utile CEO Attn.live. Ken shared, "Although our technology is different, the thread among all of the environments is the dynamic nature of their acoustics. Together our goal is to solve business challenges with our voice technology solutions.”
Immediately after the panel, Van was approached by an attendee, John, responsible for modernizing a large hospital system by leveraging voice Ai technology. John loved everything Andi, Ken, Van and Darin shared during the panel. “Is it possible to blend all your technologies?” John asked. “Absolutely!” Van said and spearheaded the conversation by gathering everyone to join the discussion with John. Van also invited event attendee and Project Voice speaker, Scott Sandland Founder & CEO of Cyrano.ai to the conversation. Essentially, the panel was a platform for an enterprise customer to envision their own ‘tech stack’. All as a result of the panel sharing today’s business challenges and matching with their inspirational technology solutions.
John had mentioned Patient Safety as a massive driver for their latest initiatives, yet also emphasized Patient Communication & overall Patient Experience are always leading focus areas for large health systems. Alarm Fatigue is a very real problem in healthcare, with caregivers overburdened from constant alarms that they become desensitized, creating massive gaps in care delivery.
Restful sleep equates to accelerated recovery times, improved outcomes, better patient satisfaction, and higher reimbursements. 30% of all hospital revenue is based on a patient experience survey known as HCAHPS, and historically the lowest scoring metric across industry. Systems like Vocalytics monitors for those beeps and helps nurses best respond to the most critical moments, in real-time.
By layering software like Vocalytics, Cyrano, and Yobe (all running on an edge-based Lenovo server), hospitals can solve for multiple problem sets in the same stack, in the same server. Together, creating a single technology solution for large health systems that can solve Patient Safety, Communication, Experience, Reimbursements, and overall Care Delivery resulting in improved customer experience and ultimately increased hospital revenue.
Real life examples like this mirrors Azafran’s Catalyst’s goal to build community. We’ll continue to support and engage technology founders and entrepreneurs, introduce applied technology to global enterprises, like John, to impactful thought leaders like Van, Ken, Darin, Andi and Scott. All with the goal to establish and leverage best practices with world-class partners like Lenovo, SoundHound and Project Voice.
“It’s incredibly exciting to be living in a time where so many great solutions can be packaged together as a single full-service stack to solve some of the most painful problems in one of the most critical sectors. The past years of the pandemic have only proven innovation stacks like these need to exist, especially with the growing shortage of caregivers over the next decade. It’s a very exciting time we’re living in.” - Van West, Founder & CEO, Vocalytics