Using AI to Achieve Health Equity

Hey, I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you'd like to apply to be a guest in the show, hit me up. Just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today's guests are Steve Chamberlain and Ann Lewandowski, who are co founders over at Equitable Evidence, Steve and welcome to the show. Thank you, Adam. Thank you. Great to be here. All right, so I'm looking forward to today's conversation. We're going to talk about using AI to achieve health equity. So a hot topic AI, how that plays into health health equity. We're going to get into that. We got a lot to unpack here today, but we'll start this episode the way that we start them all with what we like to call our mission matters minute. So at Mission Matters, our aim and our goal is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That's our mission. Steve, Ann, what mission matters to you? So thank you so much for the opportunity to speak about equitable evidences mission. It's both very simple and complex. We're using AI to track bias within the healthcare system. Looking and seeing how it influences things like clinical protocols, payment methodologies that ultimately influence health care outcomes. And this was really born out of my fear as a patient and seeing how AI was being used to ration care and potentially reinforcing bias. So when I saw a call for how to develop the future of evidence, I flipped the script in my mind and thought, But if we could use AI and its ability to review massive amounts of data to see where the pain points were for underserved people. Whenever I have co founders on here, I always have to ask this one. How'd you meet? How was, how'd this idea? How'd this come together? I can tell you my co founder story. I met my other, my co founder. I always tell people I swiped right on LinkedIn. I met my other co founder here. We've been together for eight years ever since a match made in heaven, I say, and I, and I can't do it without Chirag. So I always want to hear the co founder story. How'd you come together for this, for this company? Yeah. Yeah. So kind of a similar kind of story where Anne had this fantastic idea of needing to do something better for patients. Yeah. And so she was telling a mutual friend, okay, here's what I'm doing. Here's what I'm thinking. And so she told her, Oh, I've got just the person that you need to meet. That's already doing working with AI and healthcare. And so she introduced us. And so we just. really hit it off and just started talking and sharing about, okay, who does what, how do we want to get the ball rolling? It's just been a great partnership just because we really have not only great personality that. Is, you know, meshes well with each other, but each of our strengths it's perfect as far as me bringing the, the technology and the AI side to it with her healthcare background. So even though I've been doing this a while, she's just a wealth of knowledge. So it just worked out well and it's been going stronger since and what's your story and what's your side of the story? And I, before I, before you answer that, I have to tell you this. So sometimes I'll interview co founders separately and they had, and I'll hear the first one. And then I hear that. I said, I'm like, that's not what they said. You have the privilege of you're both doing it at the same time. That's the, and what's your side of the story? Well. I think the first and most important part of the story to note is that Steve has convinced me that we are not on the Terminator timeline. There we go. Okay. So that's very important to note . But really, like he said, I approached a friend, I was reviewing opportunities and thought, thought sort of thought pieces. Mm-Hmm. to, you know, challenge my thinking around ai and I saw a question about how could we make evidence. That influences the next 10 to 15 years of health care more actively, and that really flipped the script for me on AI and machine learning. And so I did approach a friend. So it's an arranged marriage. It's not swiping right on LinkedIn, but arranged marriage instead, and he introduced us. And, you know, I thought he was amazing. What he's doing is amazing. And it complimented my skills and opportunities very well. And I can't say how grateful I am for him. It's been a true blessing to start a business with him. Amazing. So as we start to kind of unpack the topic here let's start by just defining this, what bias in healthcare, like, like, what does that mean? Like, let's start kind of basic here. Like, what does that mean? Why does it matter? Yeah, so bias and health care is a very hot topic. I've worked in health equity for about 14 years. I worked in rural health. Started a coalition in vaccines, focusing on delivering the COVID 19 vaccine equitably around the state of Wisconsin. And, you know, joined a large national pharmaceutical company that talked about he

Mission Matters Innovation with Adam Torres