3298: Meet Medsender: AI for Admin Work

[00:00:03] What if picking up the phone at your doctor's office no longer meant being put on hold or stuck in some kind of voicemail loop? Well, today I have the pleasure of speaking with the co-founder and CEO of Medsender. And they are a company using AI to address one of the most overlooked challenges in healthcare. Because while most discussions about healthcare innovation focus on diagnostics, drugs or robotic surgeries,

[00:00:32] Medsender has taken aim at the everyday friction points that patients and medical staff experience all too often. And I suspect that we've all experienced missed calls, delayed referrals, backlogged voicemails and manual data entry. So what makes today's story more compelling is that it didn't start with a tech blueprint now. It actually began in a hospital waiting room.

[00:00:59] After witnessing first-hand how inefficient medical communication systems were. And my guest today, he made the bold decision to leave his career and tackle those problems head-on with code rather than a stethoscope. And today, Medsender's platform is now powering agents like Myra, which is a voice assistant that can process referrals, schedule appointments and manage patient interactions around the clock. All without replacing human care.

[00:01:29] In fact, as he will point out today, the aim isn't to remove people from the equation, but to free up staff so they can provide the kind of empathy and focus that their patients truly need. So my guest today will share how he built the technology, the strict standards they've upheld around HIPAA compliance and data security, and why smart automation in admin workflows is one of the biggest unlocks in modern healthcare.

[00:01:54] And you'll hear some pretty big real-world impact too, from 80% reductions in call handling time to same-day referral processing. Proof that the most meaningful innovations don't always make the headlines, but they're the ones that can absolutely transform the patient experience. But enough from me. It's time for me to officially introduce you to today's guest. So thank you for joining me on the podcast today.

[00:02:21] Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do? Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Neil. My name is Zane. I am the co-founder of Medsender. Before we dive in and talk about what Medsender does, let me explain how this all started. So rewind a couple of years back. I was, once upon a time, pre-med, planning to go to medical school. Through internships at hospitals, started realizing how broken healthcare operations were.

[00:02:48] When my mom was having appointments, I found myself driving between health systems about three hours apart to pick up paper copy CDs of her medical records, wait 45 minutes in the waiting room for them to type in information that came in over a fax before she could be seen by the provider. And all these experiences made me realize that instead of going to med school, this is the problem I want to tackle. And that is essentially how Medsender began. Wow.

[00:03:18] What a fantastic story. I absolutely love that, man, because I think we all have frustrations and come across horrible experiences and just spend the next couple of weeks just completely complaining about it. So where did you go from, hey, I need to tackle this problem? What was it that made you want to do something about it? Yeah, it's just when I see something that doesn't make sense, it's so inefficient, especially when it comes to like literally, not to sound cliche, but lives on the line, right?

[00:03:49] It's just something needs to be done about it, right? So that's when really started to focus on fixing how broken healthcare operations are. And that's really what brings us to today, right? We have an AI platform that automates all the admin operations for a medical group, everything non-clinical from scheduling patients and processing referrals,

[00:04:18] updating charts and answering patient questions. We're really trying to make sure that patients get access to the care they need right when they need it, without any delays, no waiting. So you went from wanting to work in healthcare or destined to work in healthcare to adding AI to healthcare to fix problems in the healthcare industry. Were you a techie or how did you bring it to life with technology? There's got to be a story there too.

[00:04:47] Were you always passionate about technology? Yeah. Even before I was, you know, working on the company and working on a solution ever since probably middle school, I've been like writing code, making websites, like nothing professionally, obviously, but just hacking around different things online. It's been something I've been doing for a long time, for sure.

[00:05:17] So even though I wasn't, you know, studying computer science at first, I did eventually switch to it after realizing that I wanted to go down this path instead of medical school. So that's a little background about me. I think even since I was like five or six years old, I would tinker with every electronic device I had, like hardware, like take apart all my toys and like use the parts to create new toys.

[00:05:46] Like I just think, I guess the way my brain is wired making things. Yeah. And I love that. So many people I speak to on here when they are just a natural tinkerer and sort of curious and a natural innovator, I always end up fixing problems that many of us just complain about. And there's a lot of hype at the moment around AI agents and AI voice agents.

[00:06:10] But one of the things that attracted me to you was that you realized that these AI voice agents were never actually designed for healthcare. So what makes building for medical conversations so uniquely challenging and different from other industries? Yeah. So for, for medical, anything medical, really the most important thing is not necessarily, especially when it comes to voice, right?

[00:06:40] Ultimately, we're probably going to reach a point pretty soon where every voice AI sounds about the same. Like, you know, sounds good. Like, you know, it could pass probably for like a human or whatever. Like, well, we'll get to that point pretty soon, right? Everyone's just going to sound the same. Really, what's going to matter is the integrations and the capabilities, right? That is going to be so important. You, when you're in healthcare, you're dealing with hundreds of different EHR systems on the market. Then there's different PM systems, practice, practice management systems that people use.

[00:07:11] There are different tools people use for scheduling and, and maybe different solutions people use for, for billing and just so many different platforms. They have to use maybe different portals that you need to go into to check insurance. It's just hundreds, if not thousands of different systems in healthcare, especially in the US. It's very, very fragmented.

[00:07:35] So with, with the voice AI for healthcare, the number one thing that you really need is something that really is integrated, fits in really well with the rest of the systems and tools that a practice uses. Otherwise, if you're just taking a message and transcribing it and having a human follow up, you're not really taking work off anyone's plate. It really needs to be able to connect to these systems and automate that work.

[00:08:01] And if we go back to the analog days, many people in their homes would have a twinge or a symptom and they look that symptom up in a medical book that was in their home. But more recently, of course, when any of us have any kind of twinge or symptom, we go to Google to find out, hey, what could that be? And usually get some horrifying results because we don't know, we're not medically trained and we don't know how to interpret a lot of the things that we're searching for.

[00:08:26] So fast forward to present day and now we're bringing AI into the mix when patients might say things like, I'm having muscle spasms. Generic bots could respond with wildly inaccurate advice or information that patients could misinterpret. So how do you at MedCenter, how do you ensure AI understands clinical context and avoids misunderstandings like that? Unfortunately, our AI agent has not gone to medical school.

[00:08:53] So we do not provide any clinical advice, any medical advice. That is not something our voice agent is allowed to do. Very much so as a patient, I'm sure you've Googled, like you said, right? And found all sorts of random diagnoses that Google will tell you and these websites will tell you that you might have. And that is definitely not the experience we want to create for patients.

[00:09:18] However, we have made Myra intelligent enough to understand, okay, this is a condition that our practice can treat. Let's go ahead and emphasize with them. Be like, hey, if you're having muscle spasms, I'm sorry to hear that. That sounds uncomfortable. Let's go ahead and get you scheduled with one of the doctors when you free, right? As opposed to trying to make up a diagnosis on the fly.

[00:09:45] And then, of course, since we're in healthcare, you will always have patients who should probably be going to an emergency room, trying to call their whatever dermatology office being like, hey, I think I'm having chest pain. What should I do, right? There's always going to be that one guy that does something like that. So we've also had to make sure that Myra can handle emergency situations, recognize those,

[00:10:12] and ensure the patient is told to hang up and either call 911 or go to the emergency room. Like, do not wait for an appointment at your orthopedics office or whatever the case is. And, of course, when we're talking about technology and healthcare, HIPAA compliance is just non-negotiable in healthcare.

[00:10:36] So what steps has your team taken to ensure that these AI agents meets all those strict privacy and data handling requirements? Because it's table stakes, isn't it, for you? Yeah, HIPAA is so important. You know, I wish we could just use ChatGPT and call it a day, right? But everything's got to be HIPAA compliant, secure to the nines. It really starts not only from, you know, a technical level, but just at a business level too.

[00:11:06] Every partner, vendors, anyone we use for processing any patient data, there are business associate agreements signed and in place that legally obligate and ensure they are committed to protecting the patient information to a degree that's compliant with all the laws and regulations.

[00:11:28] So BAAs, BAAs, if you looked through our DocuSign account and you were an outsider looking in, you would probably think we're running some sort of a sheep farm operation with BAA, BAA, but no, it's a business associate agreement. And very important to us that we have that signed with everyone that we do business with. That is a very important commitment people need to make.

[00:11:57] And then beyond that, obviously on a technical level, you know, we're SOC 2 audited. We encrypt things above and beyond really what's required. We really try to go above and beyond the HIPAA requirements. It's not something we take lightly. Everyone on the team not only goes through security training, but also HIPAA training on top of that, which is separate and distinct from that.

[00:12:23] Some companies even outsource their AI labeling, you know, help training the AI like overseas to third-party companies. And we go, you know, above and beyond. Like I said, we don't do any of that. We do all our AI training labeling all in-house here, you know, onshore in the U.S. So that they're really minimizing the risk of any breaches.

[00:12:51] And although healthcare is in a unique space that needs to be managed differently, I'd say one thing that it does have in common with the world of big business and corporate America is there's this increased focus on ROI of every AI investment, of every tech project, and what kind of measurable value are we actually implementing here? So beyond answering questions, how are these AI agents helping reduce things like administrative burdens for healthcare providers,

[00:13:20] particularly around scheduling and billing? Because I would imagine this is where it's best suited. But tell me more about that. So our AI agent, for example, she is connected to the rest of the MedCenter platform, which includes automatic processing of referrals. And that's a big part of, you know, any specialty group, right, is they're going to be scheduling a lot of patients that oftentimes are being referred from their primary care doctor, right?

[00:13:48] So typically we've seen historically it's taken some of our customers, they used to take them before they started using our AI, you know, anywhere from seven to 10 days on average to process a referral, you know, check that patient's insurance, make sure everything's going to be covered, and then finally start reaching out to them to get them scheduled. And if you're someone who really wants to get something seen as a patient, right, you do not want to be waiting seven to 10 days just to hear back from the doctor saying,

[00:14:17] hey, we're ready to schedule you. That is pretty insane. So with our AI, we've gotten that down to from days to seconds, essentially. Our AI is essentially getting patients their referrals processed so fast, we're hearing from patients that they're still in the parking lot of their PCP who referred them to the specialist when they get a text from us saying, hey, we're ready to get you scheduled,

[00:14:47] you know, we're going to be taking care of you and that speed, right? We live in a world where everyone just wants answers now, right? Social media, you open it, you get whatever video feed meme you're looking for right then and there, right? Uber Eats, whatever it is, you're getting your food right then and there. And there's no reason you should have to not get the same experience with healthcare, right? And that's really what we're enabling here, which is a game changer, right? And what does that mean for a practice, right?

[00:15:17] Because you're able to schedule people so much faster, they're actually seeing about a 15% increase in the scheduling rate, the amount of patients that actually schedule, right? Which is big. But just that speed, that satisfaction, it's just unbeatable. We even hear from PCPs, oftentimes they'll refer patients to two or three different specialists at the same time. And essentially whoever schedules the patient first is usually who the patient ends up seeing.

[00:15:44] So if that's the case, really, there's no way to compete without an AI processing those referrals and getting patients scheduled. And there's an old saying that the last best experience we have anywhere becomes that standard expectation we expect anywhere. And you mentioned things like Uber, Uber Eats. I would also add into that one-click checkouts, next day or same day delivery. And Spotify knows what we want to listen to. Netflix knows what we want to buy.

[00:16:13] We get those answers instantly and expect it everywhere. But healthcare can be a frustrating experience. But it is built on care and empathy and all of which are very human traits. But there's a lot of talk at the moment about AI actually improving patient satisfaction and getting those answers sooner. So do you have any real-world examples or feedback from clinics that are using your med standards solution that just bring to life what we're talking about here

[00:16:42] and the kind of difference that it is making and also setting that new level of expectation too? First of all, as a patient, if you're listening to this, if you've ever had to call a doctor's office, you've probably either had to wait on hold, leave a voicemail, or maybe someone will pick up the phone and be like, thank you for calling, da-da-da-da-da, please hold. And then you're placed on hold.

[00:17:11] And you never know when that person's going to come back. If they come back, maybe they forget about you and just leave you on hold indefinitely. And then you have to hang up and call again and then get put in the queue again. So it's just a disaster. And that oftentimes what we hear from our customers is the number one complaint they get from patients is just waiting on hold or having to leave a voicemail. So I'll give you an example. We had even just a small practice go live with Myra or Voice AI.

[00:17:40] They, despite having about three people answering calls, 60% of their calls they were missing, just straight up not answering. And obviously if you're a patient, imagine only having a 40% chance of your doctor's office actually answering. That's insane. Unacceptable. So with Myra, of course, it's 100% answer rate. I mean, Myra is not going to miss a call. She's available 24-7, you know, whatever language. Doesn't take holidays or days off or calls in sick, right?

[00:18:06] As a patient, just getting the answer you need on the spot is just a game changer. So that, you know, that alone, just eliminating those hold times, getting those responses in the moment. I think the satisfaction you get as a patient, it's just incredible. And I've seen it myself too, right? Every time I go home to visit my parents, I just see my mom on the phone half the day,

[00:18:35] waiting on hold, trying to talk to the doctor's office for my grandpa and, you know, his health and everything as he ages. And it's just insane for me to see. So I can speak personally to that. The satisfaction that you would get from this is just off the charts. And for some people listening, there will be that fear of we're talking about AI replacing human care. So how do you strike that balance between automation and the need for human empathy in healthcare?

[00:19:05] We get asked this a lot, especially by medical practices, right? They have teams of people answering the phones now, and they want to maintain that human touch, right? And really, what I want to say, and, you know, this might sound counterintuitive at first,

[00:19:29] but what we're really doing, we're not getting rid of human care. We're not replacing human care. We're actually enabling human care. We're allowing practices to really focus on providing that human touch. We're allowing the staff that are in the office to really be present in the moment and take care of the patients that are there and then, as opposed to answering five different phone calls while they're trying to check in a patient and check out another.

[00:19:59] It just doesn't work. Practices we constantly hear are understaffed. Staff are constantly, you know, there's turnover. They're constantly hiring, training, retraining new staff. And the staff that do stay there, we really just want them to focus on whatever will be most meaningful for the patient, right? Not worry about getting distracted with the phone ringing literally every second at a medical practice.

[00:20:26] So now they can actually focus on fighting the insurance company, getting the approval for whatever treatment, you know, the patient needs, as opposed to just answering a phone call for the hundredth time, telling patients like how to get to the practice. Like it just, it really is about enabling that human touch for the patients. We don't want the staff getting bogged down and distracted with things that just they don't need to do.

[00:20:56] Yeah. And hopefully if people are more relaxed, people in the industry are more relaxed, they will improve things like bedside manner, have more time to spend with patients and put them at ease, et cetera. And if we were to look further ahead, looking at your grand vision here, what role do you see AI voice agents playing in maybe helping shape the future of that patient experience over the next three to five years? And judging by the amount of change we've seen in the last three to five years, it's almost

[00:21:27] impossible to predict. But how do you see all this playing out? It's going to really create a world I see five years from now of really enabling on-demand healthcare, getting the care you need right when you need it, the answers you need right when you need them. I really see voice agents answering every single phone call coming in from a patient.

[00:21:56] There might be certain ones, like I said, clinical calls that might get rerouted or assigned for a callback. I don't know if that'll change five years from now, maybe. But everything else, at least, will have AI handling. And it's really, again, just going to create this world where any patient, anywhere they go, they're going to get the care they need, the answers they need right away.

[00:22:22] And not just patient-facing, right? Imagine, you can imagine countless hours staff spend waiting on hold with insurance companies trying to get a response for some eligibility or prior auth, whatever it is, right? I think you're going to see that going away over time as well. With AI agents, they're the ones that are waiting on hold. And who knows? The AI agent from the doctor's office might be talking to an AI agent from the insurance

[00:22:52] company five years from now. So things will get quite interesting with all these AI agents popping up everywhere. But really, I think any phone call that's administrative and non-clinical, it's five years from now really going to be handled by AI. Yeah, I completely agree. And it might sound a little far-fetched here in May, June 2025.

[00:23:18] But I suspect in 18 months, two, three years, it will be much closer to reality than many people listening might imagine. So thank you so much for shining a light on this and bringing it to all our attention and how this industry is taking shape, how it is evolving and making changes for the better in so many different ways. But before I let you go, thank you for sharing your insights. But I'm going to ask you to leave one final gift for everyone listening.

[00:23:45] And that is either a book for our Amazon wishlist that you'd recommend or a song for our Spotify playlist. I don't mind which, but what would you like to leave everyone listening and why? That is also a good question. There's a lot I can pick here, but one book or song, one book that really stands out is Atomic Habits. I highly recommend everyone read this.

[00:24:11] It's just such a great book to build better habits and help get rid of bad habits. I'll give you an example of how this helped. Last year, I took my cousins as a birthday slash graduation gift to Korea and Japan. And we're in Japan and they're seeing me eat dessert. I used to have such a big sweet tooth. I guess I still do. But I was just obsessed with trying every single dessert, mochis and everything that you could think of. Right.

[00:24:40] And they're watching me eat all this and they know how much fitness is important to me and how much I go to the gym. And they're like, at one day during this trip in the middle of it, they're like, you know, Zane, if you stopped eating added sugar, I think you would hit your fitness goals a lot faster. And I just, I just stopped mid bite of whatever ice cream I was eating. I was like, you know what? That's a great point. Starting tomorrow, I'm just going to cut out added sugar. I'm going to go cold turkey. Whoa.

[00:25:08] This is someone that has such a big sweet tooth. Like, like dessert has just been synonymous with my personality. It's just people know that, okay, if we're hanging with Zane, we got to get dessert. So the next morning I woke up and I had such a big sweet craving. But this is what I did to, to really get myself off of sugar. I built a better habit and I was inspired by the book. Essentially. Anytime I crave something really sweet, luckily in Tokyo, there's a 7-Eleven on every block.

[00:25:37] I would just walk into a 7-Eleven. I would grab a banana and I would eat the banana. Yeah. And that helped me basically replace all my, you know, sugar cravings and dessert cravings. And now I've been feeling great ever since. So highly recommend people check out that book. Oh, man. What a great choice. I'll get the book added. But I don't know how you managed to stop eating the ice cream mid tub there. Because if it was me, I'd be like, yeah, we'll do this. But tomorrow I'm going to eat this now.

[00:26:06] That's a bit of restraint there. Just stopping midway through. How do you manage that? That's definitely a great point. I think I get the same reaction from everyone. They're like, wait, actually, you just said yes and listened to your cousin's advice? Like, really? Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. But that's just what I did, I guess. When I hear a good idea, I like to move fast and execute and adopt it.

[00:26:33] So that's what happened there. Well, I'm going to put this to the test. When I'm next in New York, if we get a chance to meet, we're going to go somewhere and I'm going to eat something sweet in front of you because I've got a sweet tooth. So I'm going to see if I can derail you. We're just going to be mischievous there just for an afternoon. But seriously, for anyone listening wanting to find out more information about anything that we talked about today, where would you like to point them? Where can they get in touch and find out more?

[00:27:02] If people want to learn more about MedCenter and our voice AI agent or just have a conversation about anything we're doing, they could check us out on our website, which is medcenter.com. That's M-E-D-S-E-N-D-E-R.com. And we'll be happy to connect and chat with you. Well, I've loved chatting with you today. I've learned a lot around how conversational AI or with conversational AI interactions can become more personalized, making patients feel heard and understood.

[00:27:31] And with AI chatbots playing various roles from assisting with inquiries to sending medication reminders, all those cumbersome tasks that take up so much time, it can improve the overall patient experience. And I think one of the things we need to shout about here is with the integration of AI in healthcare, you can optimize operational efficiency by reducing things like administrative burdens, improving billing processes and enhancing data management.

[00:27:59] And there was a stat I read before you came on the podcast today that collectively, this could save the US healthcare sector alone up to $150 billion annually. So there's the ROI on this technology and it's doing so in a great way. So thank you for shining a light on this today. And next time we meet, ice creams are on me. We will be getting a bowl of fruit.

[00:28:23] You don't understand when I'm at a restaurant, I'll be the guy asking them to just make an off menu item, which is just a bowl of fruit. And they're like, sir, we don't have the menu, but we'll talk to the chef. I'm like, you got to have fruit back there. Fruit it is. Well, thank you for joining me today. Thank you, Neil, so much for having me. Appreciate you. I think what really struck me from the conversation with Zane today wasn't the technology behind MedSender. It was all about the intention behind it.

[00:28:51] There is a very human motivation driving this platform. The desire to remove delays, improve care access, and take some pressure off the people that are holding the healthcare systems together. Because I think too often we associate AI in healthcare with big clinical breakthroughs, drug breakthroughs. And as Zane so clearly showed, there is enormous power in addressing the pain points behind the scenes.

[00:29:18] Things like making sure every single phone gets answered, ensuring that a referral gets processed while the patient is still in the parking lot. It might sound futuristic, but they matter deeply to the people on both sides of the experience. So I think MedSender's approach reminds us that meaningful progress isn't about replacing people. It's about giving people time and bandwidth to do what only they can do as humans.

[00:29:45] And that is listen, care, and connect. So here's a question for you. Is the push to integrate AI across industries, are we putting enough attention on some of those smaller frictions that create the biggest frustrations? And if automation can clear a path forward, how do we ensure that the human touch still leads the way? Big question that one. So let me know what you think. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

[00:30:11] Techblogwriteroutlook.com, LinkedIn, Instagram, X, TikTok, just at me or see you. Easiest guy in the world of fun. Let me know what you think and I will return with another guest waiting inside your podcast feed. Hit refresh now and I will speak with you all then. Bye for now.