By Lindsey Jones and Nalin Saigal

As Product Designer and Senior Software Engineer at Parlance, we help health systems modernize their telephony environments to save money and provide accessible care to their patients. The voice channel cannot be overlooked – 72% of patients pick up the phone first when they want fast customer service.

It’s essential to integrate with a hospital or clinic’s EHR system to provide personalized patient experiences over the phone and to ensure frictionless data flow and accurate patient information retrieval. This integration process can be complex, which is why our process is to guide our clients through it with our industry expertise.

Together, we have over 30 years of experience in Healthcare IT. Our knowledge of EHR interfaces and workflows helps us create and customize an intuitive user experience for both patients and healthcare staff. The Parlance IVA (intelligent virtual assistant) is the tool that makes this possible.

The Parlance IVA is tailored specifically for healthcare, enabling highly conversational and natural interactions over the voice channel. The technology not only understands caller intent but also enhances engagement by processing spoken conversations as naturally as a human would. This human-centered approach to AI makes it easier for patients to navigate complex healthcare systems.

There are two phases to adopting the Parlance IVA: integrating the technology, and perfecting the user experience.

The Technology Integration

Each integration is different based on the various protocols and APIs present in hospital/clinic environments. We work with common EHRs like Meditech, Cerner, Athena, and Epic, and can use nuances we’ve learned with them to adapt to any platform. We have extra experience with Epic, as both of us happen to have backgrounds working there. Our experience has taught us how to best implement code and workflow choices, how to work our way around any health system’s domain, and to make informed recommendations to our clients.

In any project, Parlance advocates for the use of industry standards like Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) to ensure effective communication between the IVA and the EHR system. The Parlance IVA also adheres to HIPAA and other regulatory requirements for secure handling and storage practices, as data security and compliance are absolutely critical. In this area, Nalin takes advantage of the strong experience with security he obtained while working on Epic’s patient portal.

The User Experience

None of our EHR proficiency matters if we don’t craft a great user experience to pair with it. Healthcare organizations take the patient experience seriously, and we know how to customize and enhance it to create the outcomes that healthcare leaders expect.

It begins with determining how our client’s voice channel can be assisted by Parlance conversational AI. Our tenured expertise enables us to design optimal conversation flows to address scenarios such as scheduling, test results, bill pay, referrals, requesting medical advice etc. It also allows us to proactively reduce administrative burdens with dynamic fixes, such as creating ‘patient cases’ and ‘encounters’ to alleviate large voice mailboxes.  

The Parlance IVA works by retrieving patient data and using it to inform the direction of a given call. Our in-depth knowledge of data storage in EHRs allows us to think creatively about tailoring interactions based on individual patient histories, allowing for a caller experience that’s more efficient and enjoyable. Our expertise allows us to begin improving the patient journey immediately. That means our clients won’t have to wait through the learning curve they’ll endure with other less-experienced vendors. 

Our understanding of healthcare terminology informs training models, improving the IVA’s ability to recognize intents and respond accurately. We speak healthcare language and jargon, which helps us build self-serve scheduling workflows that speak in patient-friendly language to the caller and produce technical language for the health system. This is crucial for effective communication with both patients and healthcare professionals. 

Our tenure has taught us the importance of carefully mapping clinical workflows within the IVA. Our priority is always the best balance of automation and human support, which is why we designed our product to recognize emergent intents and route those calls to human agents. There is an inherent risk with automating clinical decisions. Patient safety is the top priority for Parlance. We carefully consider the right place for the IVA within the footprint of the patient journey, which must be easy, safe, and accessible.

Integrating a voice assistant into a health system’s EHR network is no simple task. With three decades of combined experience in healthcare IT, we deliver consistent success based on client requests, no matter the complexity of the installation. We love to deliver an enhanced experience to patients and we are proud to deliver strong ROI to their health systems. Parlance innovations are transforming healthcare communication and we’re so proud to be working for a company that is leading the industry forward.

About the Authors: 

Lindsey   

Lindsey Jones began her healthcare career in 2002 at an award-winning children’s hospital, where she led the registration and communication teams. This role provided her with valuable insights into healthcare administration and introduced her to electronic medical record (EMR) systems. In 2007, she transitioned to Healthcare IT, earning multiple Epic certifications, including Ambulatory, Referrals, Cadence, Schedule Strategy, Order Transmittal, and MyChart. Lindsey gained extensive experience leading Epic implementations across complex multispecialty practices before moving into consulting, where she focused on optimizing EMR workflows. Prior to joining Parlance, she led the Epic Access team at a highly rated multispecialty ambulatory practice with over 30 locations, working on initiatives to enhance patient access, including Online Scheduling, MyChart, Nurse Triage, and Provider Template Optimization. Since joining Parlance, Lindsey has leveraged her expertise to develop Athena interfaces and workflows that benefit Parlance customers today. 

Nalin 

Nalin Saigal holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of South Florida and spent the past decade at Epic, where he made significant contributions to the MyChart web-patient portal. His most notable achievement was streamlining the sign-up workflow, which has since enabled over 60 million patients to register. Nalin also played a pivotal role in shaping proxy access workflows, with a particular focus on pediatric healthcare organizations. During his tenure on the patient portal team, Nalin took on a leadership role within R&D, where he helped drive the strategic direction and design of essential features like eCheck-in and scheduling. His work also extended into interoperability, where he designed and developed the FHIR Questionnaires resource, and led various security initiatives, including the creation of Data Usage Questionnaires for third-party OAuth applications. At Parlance, Nalin brings all this experience to create Parlance’s healthcare platform services that delivers the data behind the IVA product.