Elevating Healthcare Excellence with Voice AI: A Comprehensive Look at the Apollo Hospitals Success Story

Executive Summary:

Apollo is the first hospital group in Asia (second in the world) to have achieved Stage 6 accreditations for three HIMSS digital maturity models–the Digital Imaging Adoption Model, the Outpatient Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model, and the Infrastructure Adoption Model.

The Group partnered with Augnito to leverage the latest Voice-based artificial intelligence (AI) technology to further enhance their healthcare services. Augnito’s proprietary Clinical Speech Recognition and Natural Language Understanding technology enables efficient data entry for Electronic Medical Records (EMRs)* with 99% accuracy. It makes clinical documentation faster and more user-friendly. Augnito’s product was deployed in 37 Apollo sites, across 25 medical specialties.

*EMR denotes all applications used in every department

Apollo’s Vision for Voice AI & Why They Chose Augnito:

Apollo Hospitals operates a premier EMR system, with one of the highest EMR adoption rates in the country. They chose Augnito to make the usage of this EMR more user friendly and less time consuming for doctors.

_{❝At Apollo Hospitals, we consider it our responsibility to remain at the forefront of technological innovation in healthcare. Widespread EMR adoption is the cornerstone of creating a patient-centric technology backbone. It will enable a seamless exchange of data across multiple stakeholders. Voice-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) can make this transition easy and efficient while also offering productivity gains to our healthcare providers.❞}

– Dr. Thanga Prabhu, CMIO, Apollo Hospitals

Having evaluated similar technologies from other vendors, Apollo Hospitals chose to partner with Augnito because of the following:

• Superior User Experience.
• High Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) accuracy for all types of English accents.
• Augnito’s Differentiated Customer Success Strategy.

Highlights of Augnito’s Strategy:

• Apollo Hospitals opted for Augnito’s cloud-based, enterprise-ready, SaaS (Software as a Service) solution that enabled them to get started without any hardware or infrastructure investment.
• Augnito’s cloud server is locally hosted, region specific, GDPR, HIPAA compliant and ISO 27001 certified—which met all the data security requirements of the Group.
• Apollo started using Augnito Spectra, an out-of-the-box compatible application featuring a Windows desktop app, web app, browser extensions (Google Chrome & Microsoft Edge) and mobile apps (iOS & Android).
• The installation process took less than 10 minutes and doctors were able to start using the AI immediately.
• Augnito provided dedicated Customer Success Managers to oversee onboarding and product adoption.
• They also provided a 24×7 Application Support team (for remote and on-ground assistance).
• Key aspects of the activation and adoption:
• Augnito had differentiated programs for professionals who were switching from legacy speech recognition software and those who were completely new to the technology.
• Detailed demonstrations and working sessions were conducted.
• Customer Success Managers monitored usage and drove adoption.
• Individual meetings were set up to address product queries.
• Training videos and documentation were made available.
• Apollo Hospitals’ Site IT heads were equipped with analytics data to aid the adoption.

_{❝Augnito’s technology has been successfully adopted in over 37 of our locations, across 25 medical specialties. We hope to continue bolstering our internal operations with an enhanced partnership. Deep integration of Voice AI via their Voice Services APIs and SDKs, as well as a special focus on Nursing operations is the next phase. Having already made the EMR process so easy, we look forward to the benefits that Augnito will bring to other facets of our business.❞}

– Rohini Sridhar, COO & Sr. Vice President Medical Services, Hospital Division, Apollo Hospitals

The product interface was easy to grasp for doctors, as speech is the most natural way of communicating. There were also no voice profile training requirements, as Augnito is built to be 99% accurate for any spoken accent and medical specialty. Most doctors began using Augnito Spectra for 100% of their patient notes within the first two weeks of activation.

Impact:

Doctors at Apollo have been using Augnito Spectra for over two years. An extensive survey was conducted to evaluate the qualitative and quantitative impact for doctors who had used the product for at least two months. 

Here are the results that demonstrate the clinical, operational, and financial impact of introducing Voice AI in clinical documentation workflows.

Clinical Impact

1. Increased Ease of EMR Usage: 100% of doctors agreed that Augnito Spectra made it easier to operate EMR systems.
2. Time Saved in Clinical Documentation: Doctors save, on average, 44 hours (2 days) per month on administrative tasks. Some doctors are now able to complete 46% more reports in the same amount of time.
3. Improved Documentation Quality: 89.5% of doctors agreed that Augnito Spectra helped them improve the quality of reports.
4. Improved Quality of Consultation: 24.6% of doctors believe there is a positive impact on the quality of patient interactions.

_{❝Our doctors are saving 44 hours per month on average with Augnito. Our investment has yielded 21 times the return, which is quite substantial. As an AI tool for healthcare, it is the most comprehensive one out there. It drives efficiency, accuracy, and productivity. The fact that it is so easy to integrate and operate is the cherry on top.❞}

– Ashokkan, CIO, Apollo Hospitals

Operational Impact

1. Reduced TAT (Turnaround Time) for reporting: 96.5% of doctors can create and send reports faster. Of those, 85.5% indicate that TAT has reduced by 4-5 hours and 14.5% indicate that it has reduced by a full day.
2. Improved Physician Capacity: 35.1% of doctors claim that they can accommodate more consultations.
3. Optimized Human Resources: Transcribers were re-allocated from manual data entry role to value-adding Patient Service Management.
4. Reduced Paper Usage: IT Heads agreed that Augnito Spectra enabled them to be eco-friendlier and more cost effective, saving nearly ₹30 lakh on paper consumption across their 10,000 bedded operations.

Financial Impact

1. Exceptional ROI: Apollo’s ₹21 return for every ₹1 invested in Augnito.
2. Time and Efficiency Gains: Augnito saves doctors an average of 1.74 to 5.7 hours per week, enabling 23,800 additional patient consultations each month.
3. Cost-saving Benefits: Augnito delivers cost savings through:
   • Elimination of infrastructure, hardware, and setup costs.
   • Enhanced data insights for more efficient resource allocation.
   • Additional revenue streams in pharmacies and related services through improved data management.
   • Increased revenue from returning patients due to enhanced consultation quality and faster report turnaround.
   • Improved hospital bed utilization with faster discharge times.
4. Augnito’s Holistic Impact: Augnito’s impact extends beyond cost savings, contributing to revenue generation, operational efficiency, and overall healthcare quality improvement.

Physician Satisfaction