Cardiac Surgery and Patient Experience Technology: A Conversation with Ahmad Sheikh, MD

Digital Conversations

When dealing with any kind of cardiac procedure, personal physician-patient interactions and relationships are key. But even in the cardiovascular medicine domain, there are opportunities to augment patient communications with modern technology.

Ahmad Sheikh, one of the country’s premiere cardiac surgeons, sat down with Greg Kefer to provide a physician perspective on patient engagement technology. While the deep, important conversations about treatment are not suitable for automation, there is potential for technology to handle many of the routine “logistics” interactions related to a surgical procedure. In what could be the ultimate win-win-win scenario, time for in-person interactions can be increased while simultaneously delivering process efficiency and higher satisfaction. And, it doesn’t need to be as complex as heart surgery because chatbots use simple conversational messaging that resembles the natural, effortless encounters that patients have every day on their mobile phones with friends and family.