AI-Powered Fertility Care Revolution
Key Points
- The episode of “Smart Talks with IBM” spotlights how AI, especially IBM’s watsonx Assistant, is being used to make healthcare—particularly fertility and maternal care—more inclusive, efficient, and accessible.
- Alice Crisci, co‑founder and CEO of Ovum Health, shares her personal journey from a breast‑cancer diagnosis at 31 to building a nationwide tele‑health network that delivers pre‑pregnancy, pregnancy, and postpartum services from patients’ homes.
- Ovum Health’s mission is to break down barriers related to income, insurance, religion, race, identity, or geography by offering affordable, high‑quality fertility care through an online platform staffed by board‑certified experts, nutritionists, and patient advocates.
- Partnering with IBM, Ovum Health leverages AI‑driven virtual assistants to streamline patient triage, personalize treatment plans, and enhance the overall patient experience, extending the reach of clinicians to millions in need.
- The conversation underscores the broader trend of AI accelerating telemedicine adoption in healthcare, while also reminding listeners that discussions around maternal health and fertility can be emotionally sensitive.
Sections
- AI-Driven Fertility Care Innovation - The episode examines how AI-powered Ovum Health is reshaping accessible fertility and prenatal care, featuring founder Alice Crisci’s personal journey and the platform’s remote, multidisciplinary approach.
- Urgent Egg-Freezing Decision Amid Cancer - Alice describes how a cancer diagnosis forced her to pause life, prompted an unexpected suggestion to freeze her eggs, and led to a rapid telehealth appointment and a tense confrontation when her boyfriend refused to proceed.
- Catalyst for a Cancer Nonprofit - After confronting a $20,000 expense and insurance refusing to cover essential treatment, the speaker and her friend Jen resolve to create a nonprofit that removes financial qualifications and provides direct aid to cancer patients.
- Infertility Diagnosis: Time-Based Frustration - The speaker argues that infertility is wrongly defined by a temporal threshold rather than medical evidence, causing missed underlying causes, inadequate OB‑GYN training, and pushing women toward DIY supplements or extreme IVF treatments.
- Insurance Coverage and Access Strategies - Alice explains how Ovum Health uses extensive insurance contracts, in‑house financing, and Medicaid to eliminate cost barriers throughout the reproductive care continuum, while noting ongoing IVF coverage gaps and the limited reach of employer‑based specialty insurance plans.
- Coordinated Diagnostic and Support Pathway - The excerpt outlines a structured care pathway that schedules imaging, assigns a nurse navigator, dietitian, and patient advocate, and provides supplemental resources to guide patients through diagnosis, treatment planning, and ongoing support.
- AI-Driven Fertility Care Tools - The speaker explains how IBM’s AI platform unlocked the use of 90,000 clinically‑validated content pieces, leading to four AI solutions—most notably a Fertility Answers chatbot for personalized patient support and a revenue‑cycle management tool to simplify complex insurance contract billing.
- Partnering with IBM for Scalable AI Healthcare - The speaker explains why their health‑tech startup selected IBM as its AI partner to quickly expand personalized nutrition and clinical tools, emphasizing trust, expertise, and a supportive startup culture.
- Human Touch in Fertility Chatbots - Alice describes how their Watson Assistant bot for fertility care embeds empathy, provides immediate human handoff via chat, expert routing, and consult booking, and builds trust with 67,000 users through clinically‑validated video content without forcing app registration.
- Authentic Storytelling in Health Leadership - A marketing‑focused CEO stresses authentic, patient‑centred experiences through co‑creating visual content and storytelling, while championing inclusive technology and insurance coverage to reshape women’s health care.
- IBM Tech Expands Fertility Access - The segment highlights how IBM-powered technology enables Ovum Health to broaden personalized fertility services to underserved women while emphasizing patient‑centered, responsible deployment.
Full Transcript
# AI-Powered Fertility Care Revolution **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQd-DIxK8HA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQd-DIxK8HA) **Duration:** 00:34:17 ## Summary - The episode of “Smart Talks with IBM” spotlights how AI, especially IBM’s watsonx Assistant, is being used to make healthcare—particularly fertility and maternal care—more inclusive, efficient, and accessible. - Alice Crisci, co‑founder and CEO of Ovum Health, shares her personal journey from a breast‑cancer diagnosis at 31 to building a nationwide tele‑health network that delivers pre‑pregnancy, pregnancy, and postpartum services from patients’ homes. - Ovum Health’s mission is to break down barriers related to income, insurance, religion, race, identity, or geography by offering affordable, high‑quality fertility care through an online platform staffed by board‑certified experts, nutritionists, and patient advocates. - Partnering with IBM, Ovum Health leverages AI‑driven virtual assistants to streamline patient triage, personalize treatment plans, and enhance the overall patient experience, extending the reach of clinicians to millions in need. - The conversation underscores the broader trend of AI accelerating telemedicine adoption in healthcare, while also reminding listeners that discussions around maternal health and fertility can be emotionally sensitive. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQd-DIxK8HA&t=0s) **AI-Driven Fertility Care Innovation** - The episode examines how AI-powered Ovum Health is reshaping accessible fertility and prenatal care, featuring founder Alice Crisci’s personal journey and the platform’s remote, multidisciplinary approach. - [00:03:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQd-DIxK8HA&t=186s) **Urgent Egg-Freezing Decision Amid Cancer** - Alice describes how a cancer diagnosis forced her to pause life, prompted an unexpected suggestion to freeze her eggs, and led to a rapid telehealth appointment and a tense confrontation when her boyfriend refused to proceed. - [00:06:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQd-DIxK8HA&t=374s) **Catalyst for a Cancer Nonprofit** - After confronting a $20,000 expense and insurance refusing to cover essential treatment, the speaker and her friend Jen resolve to create a nonprofit that removes financial qualifications and provides direct aid to cancer patients. - [00:09:27](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQd-DIxK8HA&t=567s) **Infertility Diagnosis: Time-Based Frustration** - The speaker argues that infertility is wrongly defined by a temporal threshold rather than medical evidence, causing missed underlying causes, inadequate OB‑GYN training, and pushing women toward DIY supplements or extreme IVF treatments. - [00:12:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQd-DIxK8HA&t=763s) **Insurance Coverage and Access Strategies** - Alice explains how Ovum Health uses extensive insurance contracts, in‑house financing, and Medicaid to eliminate cost barriers throughout the reproductive care continuum, while noting ongoing IVF coverage gaps and the limited reach of employer‑based specialty insurance plans. - [00:16:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQd-DIxK8HA&t=973s) **Coordinated Diagnostic and Support Pathway** - The excerpt outlines a structured care pathway that schedules imaging, assigns a nurse navigator, dietitian, and patient advocate, and provides supplemental resources to guide patients through diagnosis, treatment planning, and ongoing support. - [00:19:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQd-DIxK8HA&t=1174s) **AI-Driven Fertility Care Tools** - The speaker explains how IBM’s AI platform unlocked the use of 90,000 clinically‑validated content pieces, leading to four AI solutions—most notably a Fertility Answers chatbot for personalized patient support and a revenue‑cycle management tool to simplify complex insurance contract billing. - [00:22:41](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQd-DIxK8HA&t=1361s) **Partnering with IBM for Scalable AI Healthcare** - The speaker explains why their health‑tech startup selected IBM as its AI partner to quickly expand personalized nutrition and clinical tools, emphasizing trust, expertise, and a supportive startup culture. - [00:25:59](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQd-DIxK8HA&t=1559s) **Human Touch in Fertility Chatbots** - Alice describes how their Watson Assistant bot for fertility care embeds empathy, provides immediate human handoff via chat, expert routing, and consult booking, and builds trust with 67,000 users through clinically‑validated video content without forcing app registration. - [00:29:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQd-DIxK8HA&t=1749s) **Authentic Storytelling in Health Leadership** - A marketing‑focused CEO stresses authentic, patient‑centred experiences through co‑creating visual content and storytelling, while championing inclusive technology and insurance coverage to reshape women’s health care. - [00:32:27](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQd-DIxK8HA&t=1947s) **IBM Tech Expands Fertility Access** - The segment highlights how IBM-powered technology enables Ovum Health to broaden personalized fertility services to underserved women while emphasizing patient‑centered, responsible deployment. ## Full Transcript
Hello, hello. Welcome to Smart Talks with IBM,
a podcast from Pushkin Industries, iHeartRadio and IBM.
I’m Malcolm Gladwell.
This season, we’re continuing our conversations with New Creators —
visionaries who are creatively applying technology in business to drive change,
but with a focus on the transformative power of artificial intelligence
and what it means to leverage AI as a game- changing multiplier for your business.
Today’s episode is a case study of sorts.
As AI expands its reach to different industries,
the healthcare profession is on the forefront of adoption.
The integration of AI into the healthcare industry is fostering a more inclusive and efficient healthcare system.
Pushkin’s very own Dr. Laurie Santos, host of The Happiness Lab podcast, sat down for a conversation
with Alice Crisci. Alice is the co-founder and CEO of fertility care provider Ovum Health.
Founded in 2023, Ovum Health consists of a multispecialty group of board-certified experts,
physicians, nutritionists and patient advocates who are passionate about helping
moms-to-be with prepregnancy, pregnancy and postpartum healthcare. As an online platform,
they are able to diagnose, treat, and manage conditions from the comfort of patients ’homes.
Alice became an advocate for accessible family planning when she was diagnosed
with breast cancer at age 31. As a healthcare activist, author,
cancer and infertility survivor, she has dedicated her life to improving access
to exceptional healthcare regardless of income, insurance, religion, race, identity or location.
Alice and Laurie discuss the barriers to healthcare access, the ways in which AI can be
leveraged to expand the reach of healthcare providers, and how Ovum Health
partnership with IBM and the use of IBM watsonx Assistant platform has been enhancing the patient experience.
Just a heads up before we dive in—this conversation touches on sensitive topics such
as maternal health and fertility. Please take care when listening. Okay, let’s get to the conversation.
Laurie: Alice, thank you so much Laurie: Alice, thank you so much for joining me. To start off, tell me a little bit about your current role
Alice: Hi, Laurie. Thank you so much for having me today. I'm thrilled to be here. My current
role is as co-founder and CEO of Ovum Health. We are a network of fertility telehealth clinics in
the United States. And really, my job is to make sure that all the people that we want to
serve know that we exist. And to make sure that I create a sustainable company so that all the good
work that my clinicians are doing really reach the millions—truly, millions—of people who need us.
Laurie: So your fertility journey began at 31 when you were diagnosed with cancer.
That must have been awful. Tell me about the days and weeks surrounding that news,
and what was your life like?
Alice: Yes, the way that I've always described it is that the news almost hit the pause button on my life. And the extraordinary thing was
that it became my full-time job, just managing all the diagnostic steps involved. So truly,
for the first 30 days, I was in a vortex of all things cancer related. And I was one
of the lucky ones in that a friend asked me, “Are you going to freeze your eggs?”
I would never have even thought to ask about it had she not brought it
up. I went into the fertility clinic, and really what was extraordinary is
that the day before my appointment at the physical clinic, I had a telephone consult.
This is before the term “telehealth” or “telemedicine” was even a thing, okay? Because
it was so many years ago. She called by phone; there was no videoconferencing even invented yet.
So it was 5 p.m. on a Tuesday, and it was already day two of my cycle, and she said to me, “Alice,
if you're going to do this, you have to start tomorrow morning at 7 a.m.” So I had less than
24 hours to make the biggest decision of my life. And at the time I had a boyfriend who was working
in the front bedroom of my home. Okay. I walk into that room and say, “Okay, I'm all excited. We have
to freeze embryos.” And he looked at me and he goes, “We're not going to do that.” And I said,
“What do you mean, ‘We're not going to do that’?” He said, “No, I'm not going to do that with you.”
I said, “Why wouldn't you do that with me?” And he told me then that he didn't think we had a future together.
And in that moment, I was on my own. So when I walked into the fertility clinic the
next morning, they handed me a catalog of sperm donors. So—can you imagine? Okay, I'm already
dealing with cancer, completely overwhelmed, and I get handed a catalog of sperm donors,
and it was all these statistics, so it looked like I was picking a basketball team and being like,
“Who do I think is going to be MVP this year?” And I had a friend with me at the appointment
who said “No, I think this is going to be so much fun.” And I handed the catalog to her and I was
like, “Great. You pick.” So part of the journey was such a massive learning curve so fast. But
going through fertility preservation helped me focus on life after cancer.
So I always fundamentally, deeply believed “I'm going to get through this cancer.”
But I also knew I wanted to live the life I imagined afterwards. And that whole experience
started that journey: What is life going to look like after I get through all this trauma?
But for me, I felt the fertility-preservation experience was incredibly life affirming. You
know, I loved the self-injections because it felt like I finally was doing something
for my life rather than having the medical community do something to me.
Laurie: And—so talk about how that experience led you to the founding
of Fertile Action and MedAnswers. Alice: Well, I—I literally walked
out of the fertility clinic that same day. The business manager had handed me—kind of, like,
pushed a piece of paper across her desk to show me how expensive the treatment was going to be.
It was a $20,000 expense. And I, you know, almost flipped out. I thought, “Well, how am I going to
do this?” And you could see the look on her face. She almost felt devastated that in my
time of need, she couldn't just give this to me. My friend Jen was on the phone with the only
nonprofit that existed at the time, who basically was telling her I don't qualify. I, meanwhile,
was on the phone with my American Express card getting an increase limit. So that moment was the
first game changer, because I walked out of the office and I looked at my friend Jen and I said,
“We're going to start a nonprofit. We're going to fix this.” I felt offended that
there would be, uh, financial criteria to determine who gets help and who doesn't.
I think—you know, you're, you're 31 years old. You're at the prime of,
of your career. You're still climbing the ladder. You haven't made it. I barely had enough years to,
you know, put into a 401(k) or an IRA. I don't have a nest egg. You know,
this was not something that I felt, like, we needed to make people prove that they have
financial need. The cancer is the need. And I was offended that insurance didn't cover it.
And insurance was willing to cover a wig. They were willing to cover reconstructive breasts. And
so it seemed that society was telling me, “It's more important to us that you look like a woman
when you're done with us than actually produce offspring like a woman.” I was really disturbed
by that. So that was—the first pivotal moment of starting a charity was because I wanted to
educate, I wanted to advocate.
Laurie: And so talk about how that passion ultimately evolved into the launch of Ovum Health in 2023.
Alice: Well, what ended up happening is I was doing all this advocacy work and
all this legislative change, and I was educating all up and down California.
But I also was witnessing the spread of misinformation on Facebook groups. At the time,
I knew a lot of clinicians, and I had them on text, and so these women were asking questions on
these groups, and, and I was able to get an answer within 15 minutes from my professional network,
so I thought, “Okay, well, there's got to be a better way to do this.”
So with my business partner, uh, the illustrious Dr. Santiago Munne, who's a world-renowned
reproductive geneticist and researcher—I emailed him and I said, “We've got to do something
about this.” There's got to be a digital way to let everyone have access to the people
that he and I know, and they should be able to ask questions in a safe,
protected environment by actual experts—not their peers pretending to be an expert, right?
We all have that, that person who's like, “Well, I had this experience, and therefore
my experience pertains to your experience,” and it's just not personalized at all. So I thought,
with technology where it's at, there's no reason not to create an app that can connect the public
with a trusted network of professionals. That was the first thing that we did, and we
ran that for years. So we have over 90,000 pieces of clinically validated content. Multidisciplinary
specialists who have answered patient questions as volunteers, which is extraordinary. But what
we saw in the data—because we collected so much health information on our users—we saw that they
weren't being diagnosed with infertility, yet they had been infertile for more than three years.
And because they weren't diagnosed with infertility, they also weren't
being diagnosed with the underlying conditions causing infertility. So to me, infertility is a
frustrating diagnosis because it's based on time. It's not based on labs. It's not based on imaging.
It's not based on anything except “You don't have the outcome that you want in the time frame that
the professional societies has deemed relevant.” If you're under the age of 35 and haven't gotten
pregnant the old-fashioned way in a year, you have a disease diagnosis of infertility. The medical
community wasn't telling women that in the same way that I had someone call me and say, “I'm sorry
to break the bad news: you have breast cancer.” If we don't know that somebody has infertility,
then they're not looking at the underlying cause. So you have women who are trying to figure out
what's going on, and they're, they're turning to Facebook groups or they're turning to other
online communities. They're—and trying to take, you know, this supplement, that supplement,
but they're, they're not really going through a proper diagnostic journey.
And we wanted to solve that. So ob-gyns—even though we think of them as the ones that deliver
the babies, they're actually not trained in fertility. They're not trained in diagnostics for
infertility, and they're not trained in, in optimizing fertility. And then
you have the IVF doctors that are the most extreme treatment possible.
That has helped millions of babies be born worldwide and is a wonderful treatment,
but it doesn't need to be the first line of treatment. There are so many conditions
that can actually be treated to help restore natural fecundity, meaning someone's ability
to ovulate on their own at the right time of the month to ensure that the size of the egg
is optimal, to ensure that the timing of the egg release is optimal, and to ensure that
sperm has the best possible chance of getting to the egg for a fertilization event to happen.
When you look at all the optimization steps that are possible, it's a miracle that anybody gets
pregnant on their own, okay? It really is. And I think we're all raised with the idea that when we,
we want to have a baby, we think it's going to be easy and it's going to be fine,
because we've spent all of our lives telling young people how not to get pregnant.
That—we make it seem like they're going to look at a man and get pregnant. And that's just not,
not what's so. We can help same-sex couples optimize their attempt as well. And, you know,
that is both on the male side and on the female side. So really, Ovum Health was created to solve
a huge gap that exists, and it's not just in the United States; it's worldwide. Between an ob-gyn
and an IVF doctor, so that—we can get all those diagnostics done. And then we can do medical
nutrition therapy first to start optimizing each step of the fertility process, and then
use pharmaceutical solutions to kind of take over the cycle—ovulatory experience—to make sure that
we are helping to craft the, the most effective and efficient timed intercourse cycle possible.
Laurie: So your situation was just so awful, right? Where you had to
pay for your treatment on an Amex card. I'm curious what the current state of
access is for family-building treatments in the U.S. Is there still this higher socioeconomic
barrier for fertility treatment compared to other health issues?
Alice: There definitely is. And it varies widely. So with Ovum Health, we are practicing
medicine in a lane that's covered by insurance. We're not doing anything that falls outside of
your normal kind of consultative approach to accessing specialty care. Because of this,
we're covered by insurance. There are some innovative testing platforms that are not covered
by insurance. So we work with our patients to help them with all their out-of-pocket expenses.
We do offer financing in house. We offer payment plans. You know,
we try to be as flexible as possible to make sure that there is no socioeconomic barrier.
I have 176 insurance contracts as of today, in 8 states. I intend to be in all 50 states by the
end of next year with insurance contracts. My hunch is we’ll have over 600 contracts.
That includes Medicaid. So there are plenty of things that Medicaid pays for. And it's
not just our ability to help someone have a healthy pregnancy; it's our ability to help
someone have a healthy baby. And that means that we have to support women through the reproductive
continuum. So what Ovum is really creating is being the glue at, kind of, every step of that
experience for a woman. In the IVF setting,
yes, there are still huge gaps in coverage. There are a lot of programs out there like Carrot and
Progyny that have targeted the large-employer market as a specialty insurance product. Only
0.3 percent of reproductive-age people work for large employers. So it's really important
that we still access IVF coverage through your basic health insurance plans, like the Aetnas
and the Blues and the UnitedHealthcares. That's where you still have coverage gaps,
and so much of that is dependent on who your employer coverage is through,
and so much of that is if you're self-insured or if you're on Medicaid, etc. So Medicaid
currently doesn't cover infertility services, and Medicaid pays for about half of the
pregnancies and live births in America. So we have to start thinking more
broadly about treatment options.
Laurie: And so—walk us through a typical patient journey with Ovum Health, from first contact to final outcome. What are all
the ways that Ovum helps them build a family?
Alice: Yes, that’s a great question. So really, the first thing that we’re looking at is a diagnostic journey that
we want to get people through rapidly. So in a traditional healthcare environment,
if you have to see the number of specialists that are under one roof at Ovum, it probably
would take you six months to see all of them. And you’d have six to twelve different appointments,
because that’s how many specialists we’re bringing onto your case. So you initially meet with our
nurse practitioner to review your medical history. We do ask you to fill out quite a bit of data,
because we want it to be, again, as efficient as possible for you. We don’t want to waste your
time. We want to make sure that we are well prepared to be able to ask all the follow-up
questions and review that medical history so that we can turn around
and order your lab work right away. So typically when someone calls in to us,
we actually book four appointments for them at once so that they don’t have any delays. We book
that first visit. We book the lab appointment for them at their local lab. After the lab visit,
then our patients get to meet with the lead clinician on their case. And that’s usually
when they get an initial diagnosis from the lab work and the history that we reviewed.
At that point, then, we probably need to send them for imaging. We need to do fallopian
tube evaluation, uterine evaluation, and ovarian evaluation. And they then get paired with a nurse
navigator. That nurse navigator’s job is to help them understand what their treatment options are
going to be. The doctor had already reviewed the treatment options. However, as we all know,
we are trying to take in as much information as we can in that doctor visit, and then as
soon as we get in the car, or as soon as we get off the phone, we think of 30 questions to ask.
So we pair them with a nurse navigator so that they have somebody to ask all those follow-up
questions efficiently. At that point, then, we lay out kind of what the next three to four months of
their life is going to look like. In all cases, we assign them a registered dietitian. So they have
a nurse navigator that is the glue of their case and helping to facilitate every next step.
They’re assigned a registered dietitian and they even get a patient advocate, who’s kind
of advocating for their insurance, helping them understand what else they need, where they need
to order it. It could be a custom supplement list. It could be an at-home continuous hormone
monitoring kit. It could be their molecular sperm-testing kit for their partner as well.
So we line up kind of the diagnostic journey first, but in a lot of cases we’re already
starting some medical nutrition therapy, or medicated weight loss, or working with the
registered dietitian even alongside some of the other steps, because we have some of the diagnoses
already. We know people who are insulin resistant. So we know what kind of diet plan we need to help
them with. We know the lifestyle changes we need to pair them with. We’re even adding
PT into our practice, so that we can customize exercise plans specific to somebody’s condition.
Laurie: Ovum Health is also launching during this pivotal moment in AI. And so I’m curious:
was it always the plan to leverage this technology for Ovum? Or was it more of
an organic evolution to this point?
Alice: It was both. It was always my intention that we needed to have AI-enabled technology to be able to scale faster and to
also be able to improve quality control across so many states, because how do you really do that?
I need to upskill all different levels of healthcare providers. Then how do we
efficiently kind of manage that clinical excellence experience? And the only way
to really do that is to create clinical decision–support tools that everybody
utilizes that are very easy, to make sure that we’re managing our care in a consistent fashion.
How else could we possibly do it? State by state, you know, experience level varies. So
that was always kind of the plan. The area that I didn’t even know was possible was this area of
being able to reach the masses truly through an AI tool, through the Fertility Answers
app. So when IBM approached me for that partnership, the bells went off.
I always knew that I couldn’t scale volunteer humans. I have a network of over 400 medical
professionals across so many disciplines. We’re talking MDs, genetic counselors, geneticists,
psychologists, ob-gyns, naturopaths, functional medicine docs. I have about 13 different
specialties, all willing to answer free questions,
but relying on that voluntary basis is, is not something that can scale.
It’s a beautiful thing that they’re doing, and it’s created 90,000 pieces of clinically validated
content, but we needed to move beyond kind of the initial interaction, being a human answering
the question, and leverage AI to be able to do that. So what was really extraordinary for me
is that I had my eyes kind of opened by IBM to see what was possible for my practice with AI.
Once that seed was planted, then the world opened up. We have four tools that we’re
working on right now. The first has already been integrated, which is the Fertility Answers app.
So the initial experience for Fertility Answers: women—and mostly women, because they’re the ones
downloading the app, but we take men. I promise we’re not excluding them! We see both. It takes
two. And they have the opportunity to access all that content in a personalized way through the IBM
Watson Assistant chatbot. So that is incredible. We’re also deploying a revenue-cycle management
tool. You can imagine: with all these different contracts that I have—176 contracts,
and eventually I’ll have probably 600 contracts— they all have different price lists. Makes
it very difficult to forecast what’s in my electronic medical record system for that day,
based on the type of insurance. Now, even within one insurance contract, they might have hundreds
of insurance plans that have all various mechanisms for what we can expect to bill.
You might have coinsurance, you might have a deductible, you might have a copay, and it
varies plan to plan. We’re dealing with a level of medical literacy in this country that is very low.
And the layperson doesn’t understand their insurance all the time. How am I
expected to be able to deal with truly thousands of combinations of insurance
plans based on these contracts? You have to have AI just to tackle that big-data issue.
So we have a revenue-cycle management tool that is also helping us with an
automated clinical workflow. And that’s—what a wonderful partner we have, called CloudAstra,
who is also in the IBM ecosystem. So it’s incredibly exciting to know that I can
come out of a startup mode profitably because we’re deploying smart tools from the beginning.
Then we also have in development our fertility clinical decision–support tool to really scale
the clinical experience so that we’re analyzing genomic data, lab data, clinical data, and even
self- reported data from our users in a way that helps our clinicians know what to do next.
And that’s all based on standard-of-care guidelines, all evidence-based medicine,
but built into a really useful tool to help them do their job more efficiently. Recently,
the international guidelines for PCOS—polycystic ovarian syndrome—updated guidelines. There were
200 individual points in these guidelines. Two hundred! And that’s for one condition.
So imagine you multiply that across dozens of conditions. You can’t expect a human to retain
that information and to be able to recall it, you know, right when someone’s in front of them.
So tools that have IBM’s AI enabled are really critical to do an exceptional job in healthcare.
And then the fourth tool that we’re creating with IBM is a medical nutrition therapy tool
so that we can scale beyond our registered dietitians and be able to help women really
optimize their fertility, health, and wellness by having a personalized approach to medical
nutrition therapy. And that also requires AI.
Laurie: So when you decided to go big and introduce AI in so many different ways to scale up your app and, and your business
more broadly, why did you pick IBM as a partner?
Alice: IBM was an easy yes when we were approached about this partnership, for so many reasons. I'm not an AI startup; I'm a healthcare startup, and
it's very important that I don't waste resources trying to figure out AI all by ourselves.
We needed to be very fast to market and needed to be with a trusted partner. IBM brought that
to the team right away. But secondarily, the IBM team that I've been exposed to is incredible. So
from a partnership standpoint, the team has made it easy. Joyful. Uh, they're some of the smartest
people that I, I've had the pleasure to work with. And so I think the culture of what IBM's created
for startups is very unique. And truly, every single aspect of the team that I've worked with,
from the developers themselves that build labs to the customer-success team to my day-to-day team—I
mean, my goodness, it is just a dream team. So IBM made it as easy as possible for me to say yes.
Malcolm Gladwell: Alice really helped open my eyes to the challenges facing providers. In an industry
as sensitive and individualized as fertility care, it makes sense that scalability would be an issue.
But with the help of AI, Ovum Health has been able
to solve a few of the extraordinary challenges of bringing effective, affordable fertility
care to the general public—from multiplying the impact of its medical-professional network to
enabling more-accurate forecasting of complex contracts. Patients are benefiting directly
and indirectly from the integration of AI across the healthcare journey.
Laurie: A lot of people have nuanced health questions that are unique to them due to their own personal health history, maybe their lifestyle factors,
or specific medication they're taking, how does the fertility bot personalize all its responses
Alice:Yeah, that's a great question. So when we onboard our users, we do ask them to fill out quite ab it of health information, and we have 99% compliance rates
on the health information people fill out. So when you ask a question, you're asking it with all your health information already attached to it.
The library of responses then shows you questions and answers of people
who are similar to you. If that doesn't answer your question,
you still have a chance to route your question to the same volunteer network of professionals that
existed before the bot was there.
Laurie: And so some problems, especially those related to fertility and natal care, require human-to-human connection,
right? This is what we're built for as primates, to kind of engage with our families. As the
chatbot addresses such a personal health need, how easy is it for a doctor to interject or
for a patient to request care from a doctor?
Alice: Very easy, and that was super important to me. One of the things that I love the most out of IBM was that I had the chance to infuse
empathy directly into the bot experience. I didn't want something that sounded or
came off as robotic. But it is incredibly easy in the Watson Assistant flow for someone to request
that immediate human connection. We have a chat feature that gets to a patient advocate right
away. We have a feature where they can route their question to that network of experts right away.
And we have a feature where they can book a consult with one of our
medical professionals right away as well.
Laurie: So you have over 67,000 users now, which is kind of amazing. How do you get them to feel the kind of trust and
empathy people expect from their healthcare provider, especially in the fertility space?
Alice: In our case, we have a very human brand. So from the moment that someone interacts
with our content, they're already experiencing clinically validated answers in the form of video.
We don't ask people to download and register our app upon the first touch point. You know, we are
infusing medical education into the community through video so that they can start to build that
brand trust with us from the beginning. What I've noticed is that because our brand is such a human
connection, we've built up so much trust. And it's not just about the app experience;
it's also how active our Instagram is. It’s where we answer live questions for people—in Instagram
Live. So there's multiple ways for people to get served for virtually free and in unlimited
fashion. We've vetted all the providers for them so they don't have to do that.
So I think that there's multiple things that go into building brand trust. That's why we show
sort of the profile of someone who asked a similar question already so that they can find themselves
in that; “Oh, wow, that person who asked my similar question or almost my exact same question
also is 37 years old, or also has PCOS, or also has endo.” So there are different ways that we
are able to kind of get into the psychology of our community to make sure that they feel heard.
And I think whenever anybody feels truly heard, then that trust is, is possible.
Laurie: So this season of Smart Talks features New Creators—visionaries like you who are creatively
applying technology in business to drive change. I know that you have a bachelor of science in media
arts and design. How does this creative background inform what you do as CEO of Ovum Health?
Alice: Oh, that's such a great question. I use my degree every single day. And I am—I'm not
a spring chicken. So I've had that degree for quite a while, Laurie. Every CEO has kind of a,
I would say, leading skill set. You know, there are some that are leading financial-type people.
There's some that are leading, kind of, business-to-business salespeople.
I'm very much a leading marketing-type CEO. So for me, the patient experience,
the user experience, that human experience is kind of everything that I stand for and I'm about,
and it must be authentic. And because of the background that I have, I love nothing more
than coproducing with my chief storyteller, Joshua Noonan, who's been with me forever.
We love coproducing content. It could be a 22-second video that, that's educational. It
could be an hour-long course, you know, for professionals. And so I do feel that I bring
that media arts and design background to, kind of, my type of leadership. And storytelling is
kind of everything. You know, being a great storyteller, no matter what your brand is, or
no matter the type of leader you are, is the way that kind of attracts and connects people to us.
And it's, you know, fortunate that social media has created this visual world that we live in and
this video-based world that we live in as well.
Laurie: So you're an activist for accessibility and inclusivity in healthcare. If you could look years down the line, how do you see
creative applications of technology like Fertility Answers changing how we talk about women's health?
Alice: Well, first I think that these tools need to be covered by insurance. So I think what is
going to be the game changer in the value-based care market is that insurance is going to figure
out that by creating a reimbursement mechanism for more digital therapeutics, but also for digital
diagnostic tools, it’s going to lead to a much more cost-effective healthcare society, no matter
what kind of insurance type or plan that we have. So on the accessibility side, those tools are
really meaningful to the future of healthcare. I would also say that technology creates a more
democratized healthcare environment. A lot of our patients live four hours from a type of
specialist that they need. Four hours! You know, a lot of them are at least an hour,
an hour and a half from a major lab. So leveraging these types of tools
gets them the answers that they need faster, which will lead to better intervention earlier.
And that's where we come down to “Healthy mamas, healthy babies make happy families.”
Laurie: Awesome. That's a great way to end. Thank you, Alice, so much for being with us on Smart
Talks today. It is such great work that you are doing to help women and families. So thank you for
all your work and thanks for our chat today.
Alice: Thank you, Laurie. It's such an honor to get to be on Smart Talks and it was a delightful conversation.
Malcolm Gladwell: That about wraps up today’s episode. I want to send a huge thank-you to Laurie and
Alice for deepening the way I think about AI’s expanding role in the future of healthcare.
It was illuminating to hear a firsthand account of how providers are already integrating the
power of transparent, human-centric generative AI through watsonx. It's enabling telehealth
platforms to multiply their impact and is quickly becoming essential
to offering comprehensive care to patients. As our conversation with Laurie and Alice showed,
accessibility has long been an issue facing patients, particularly in the fertility space.
With the help of technology from IBM, Ovum Health is meaningfully expanding its reach
to women who previously may not have been able to access personalized fertility care.
Steps like these are helping to usher in a new age in healthcare—one that
holds incredible potential for both patients and providers. Yet as new technology is implemented,
it needs to be done with responsibility and care. Using emerging technologies in sensitive
fields like fertility has the power to transform how people receive care—but,
as Alice emphasized, only if patient needs are central to how we implement solutions.
Ovum Health already has over 67,000 users—just think of all the pregnancies that have been
supported by the platform. And, as we just heard, this is only the beginning. It's
exciting to see how this new technology will continue to reach people in need.
Smart Talks with IBM is produced by Matt Romano, Joey Fischground,
and Jacob Goldstein. We’re edited by Lidia Jean Kott. Our engineers are Jason Gambrell, Sarah
Bruguiere, and Ben Tolliday. Theme song by Gramoscope.
Special thanks to Andy Kelly, Kathy Callaghan, and the EightBar and IBM teams,
as well as the Pushkin marketing team. Smart Talks with IBM is a production
of Pushkin Industries and Ruby Studio at iHeartMedia. To find more Pushkin podcasts,
listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
I’m Malcolm Gladwell. This is a paid advertisement from IBM.