I never had much contact with our healthcare system until my daughter was born. She was early and quite small, which meant that we spent her first months in doctor’s and specialist’s offices.

Because of her rough start to life, I called the doctor every time she spiked the slightest fever. And every time, the nurses would ask me to repeat past medical history which frustrated me to no end.

I think about this situation quite frequently when I am at work because our company offers customer service products that should be successful in addressing this problem. Knowledge-centered customer service is rapidly becoming adopted in industries like financial services and telecommunications, but why is a variant of it not making inroads in the world of healthcare?

What I wish is that I had a good self service site endorsed by my doctor, or maintained by the medical association that my doctor belonged to which would help me triage my daughter’s symptoms to decide whether it made sense to call a nurse.

This site should contain a list of common ailments, and an understanding of which ones were serious. I also wanted to be able to search by symptoms, or be able to navigate down interview questions which would help me identify what were considered important symptoms. And, as I didn’t want to be overwhelmed by my search results, I wanted to be able to enter my daughter’s characteristics, and have only childhood ailments pertinent to her age group displayed.

If I was not able to find what I was looking for, or if I thought it important to call my doctor, I wanted to escalate my question to a nurse without having to repeat myself.

I also wanted the nurse to have a full online access to my daughter’s records so that she understood what her prior ailments had been as I always feared that I would omit something critical in repeating her story every time I called. I also wished that we had a universal healthcare record so that her pediatrician would have access to the specialist’s records and vice versa.

As a new mom, I would commiserate with other moms about my daughter’s current illness, only to hear that others were exhibiting similar symptoms as my child.

Why shouldn’t healthcare providers be part of this extended community? Doctor’s offices could send out proactive email regarding, for example, the symptoms of this year’s flu and basic preventative tips.

In addition, it would have simplified my life if my doctor’s office had been able to send me email notifications of critical dates for childhood vaccinations. This sense of automated, yet personal attention would have instilled in me a sense of confidence that my doctor was looking out for me.

From a mother’s perspective, this is what I want. However, healthcare providers have a much harder job of attempting to simultaneously balance quality, cost, satisfaction of service and compliance to standards when they help a patient. For example, nurses answering questions over the phone, must be in compliance with regulations, and must follow scripted questions before starting to diagnose the issue.

In order to ensure quality, and to choose the right option for the patient and for the healthcare provider, the nurse must fully listen to all the symptoms and may have to probe in depth into related symptoms before recommending a resolution which could range from a low cost home remedy, to a visit to the doctor’s, or to the highest cost solution of an immediate hospital visit. The nurse must also ensure that the patient is satisfied, and comfortable with the recommendation

In many cases, nurses are asking these questions from memory based on their extensive training. A more efficient manner in being able to ensure regulatory compliance and quality of service is to imagine nurses using an online, interactive knowledge-driven system that would guide them through the discovery and diagnosis process.

For example, the nurse would be presented with a list of introductory questions which would be sufficient data to associate a patient record with the caller.

The nurse would then be able to drill into symptoms in a structured manner that would reflect the compliance needs of the health care provider.

As symptoms were reported, under-the-cover knowledgebase searches would be launched. The patient information and the symptoms would be used to constrain the searches so as to present the nurse with the most appropriate solutions.

In addition, treatment options would be presented, with the associated recommended medication which would have been cross-checked against any reported allergies.

This would help control the conversation with the patient, standardize recommendations given and ensure that the best medication is chosen, not necessarily the ones that the nurse is familiar with.

The nurse would then have the option to email the recommendation and the transcript of the conversation to the patient - both which also would become part of the patient’s history.

Tools like these would give me more confidence in my relationship with my healthcare provider. I would feel that I was getting the best recommendations based on my entire health history, and not just on a quick impersonal phone exchange.

Company: KANA