Jeff Hrusko :
0:15
Hello and welcome to another episode of cogs. This is Jeff Hrusko, your host and this is a show where we discuss how we learn why we don't at times and some of the things that make the difference. And today I'm joined by Niraj Swami who is CEO of Adapt tract. A fascinating company, who designs learning which is backed by a AI that tracks people's habits and talents. And right now, he's primarily focused on the medical industry and doctors. Hi, thank you for joining. Hi, Jeff. Thanks for having me here. Hi, everybody.
Niraj Swami :
0:58
You're very welcome.
Jeff Hrusko :
1:00
So you do a lot of things, but maybe you could tell me a little bit about what this is how you leverage a AI to teach very busy people and people who who have a lot of education, additional skills, or what are you teaching them? Absolutely. So the the concept of adapt track came from this idea of blind spots and really just nudging habits that matter by surfacing information from our day to day data. So the premise is really simple. Everything we do, generates data. And if we give ourselves the opportunity to learn from it, we can make a lot of sense of it. What do you mean by by blind spots? Things we might think we know but they are obvious. They might be easy. They might be those things we were
Niraj Swami :
2:00
Like I knew it, huh. In our presence of mind, I guess.
Jeff Hrusko :
2:06
I think I understand as a podcast host the first couple episodes I did, I realized some vocal tics that I had that I was totally blind to. So I think sometimes people have to kind of see or have like a third party or an application kind of will allow you to look at things in a different way. Is that similar to what the AI does? Absolutely. And I think we're using the term AI when it comes to that track and the workout that I do, in a little broader sense. It's really thinking about cognitive technologies, thinking about computer software and algorithm driven logic. And that's really where the blind spots kind of factor in right back. I think it's, we think that we are doing something but our
Niraj Swami :
2:59
Data seems to tell something else, especially if the data is accurate enough.
Jeff Hrusko :
3:05
So it's a little bit of a disconnect between the story we tell ourselves and the actual behaviors that
Niraj Swami :
3:14
Absolutely whether it's a story we want to tell ourselves or it's an identity, we want to make a change that we want to adapt to.
Jeff Hrusko :
3:24
That that's so prevalent, because we all because we've, I've had some discussions just a bit ago about personal biases. And there's so much that it's so hard to reflection is a difficult thing. And even if we think we're good at it, sometimes it's very difficult, especially when things are unconscious unconscious habits that we have that just kind of sit below the surface.
Niraj Swami :
3:51
So tell me a little bit about how does this go on a mobile device, as a doctor, hang in with them.
Jeff Hrusko :
4:00
What is that process? Like?
Niraj Swami :
4:03
Absolutely, yeah, this is actually, you know, very, in order to answer that question, we really had to think about this learner to take the position. And this is a person that is extremely short on time, managing a lot of simultaneous activity switching between patients, which themselves bring a new and a whole new different level of stress focus
requirements, and then you have technology stack that's starting to show up for the physician persona, that the electronic medical record system, it really was a starting point for us to think about the user experience to be, you know, let's not give them one more thing. So we've we've built it in a way that it's as easy as going to a website like you were browsing the web, and we've also opened it up in a way where you can call in a number and get it in a hands free way.
Thinking really about this learner that might be in the middle of some other tasks, maybe they can pick up on their blind spots and learn from them while they're driving to work, or they're reading up on news in the morning. Aspects where we can kind of fit fit in their lives, as opposed to actually expect them to take this on. And that's just you know, that's, that's,
Jeff Hrusko :
5:22
that's one thing you said, there's is such a thing as, as a compliance trainer that I get so much and very well justified. Not another thing. I just don't need you to give me another thing. And I think from the learners perspective, and definitely from an adult learner perspective, you always have that what's in it for me here like what what am i gaining by doing this? So what do you think your users or what do they feel like they're gaining from using this platform?
Niraj Swami :
5:58
That's really a that's Really the golden question. We believe that we're we're treading this very thin line between compliance and curiosity. And and this this thin line where we want them to know these blind spots that blind spots that lower their risk, perceived risk around burnout, administrative clinical aspects of their day to day. But we need them to be curious about it. And so, you know, if we try to package up learning and assume that we're just going to give them a nice little course on blind spots to watch out for in their day to day practice, it might be the content that they need, but not the modality and the experience. And so for us, it really has been about understanding the learner persona but also understanding their context understanding and going really deep into the day, a week, a month, a year in the life of physician.
Jeff Hrusko :
6:58
That's something beautiful that you said. Curiosity, not just compliance, I'm going to do something with that. I love that it actually reminded me I had this this boss A while ago and he said, You have to have indefatigable curiosity, which I don't know if I ever pronounced that word. Right. But I, but I absolutely love that. Love that word. So what is the adaption rate on this? Like, how long has it been out? And how do you know that sort of KPIs? Key Performance Indicators? Do you have any out there to see that this is working? What is the response been from the the learners?
Niraj Swami :
7:42
Absolutely, we've been, I would say, multiple rounds of testing. And the whole idea of building a learning platform or learning assistant for a physician has been a learning process in itself. We've gone through this a couple of ways we initially launched very hands off, non tech low tech Manual version in traditional entrepreneurial world kind of see, in typical entrepreneurial world, you see, this idea that you do things that don't scale. I think Reed Hoffman talks about this. A lot of you do things that don't scale first to learn how you can really reach the audience and figure out what is it that the real pain point is, and I think we're still on that journey of identifying what that specific pain point is that we're going after. But I'll give you one KPI that actually helped us rethink a little bit of our approach. And it was really monumental when we we added a chief medical officer on staff really put the voice of learning in the product itself. We have been very deliberate about that, in understanding what is their context, it's one data point, but it has given us that particular data point has given us so much learning around the use case of this. We're working with EHR electronic health record systems, to really access a large pool of physicians. We're opening up our pilot to, you know, 2700 physicians and getting data on what is it that they really like about this experience of knowing blind spots, you've got, you know, a certain demographic that knows their blind spots are just are aware of their blind spot. And it's not that novel to them. But when you go to an earlier demographic, for instance, somebody that's just entered the the work force somebody who is new to this field and are actually apprehensive and a little little worried about am I going to burn out this workload is not like residency or this work workload is not like my fellowship. I come from a family of physicians.
My sister is a practicing endocrinologist and I've seen her go through her entire training and learning journey. And as she comes into the workforce and starts practicing the last few years, you see that the things that she thinks about on a daily basis is it's really like any any any of us really we're, we're looking to get more insights. From our day to day our KPI. Around engagement is very important learner engagement, physician engagement or KPI around how long does it take for the physician to find information or aged something meaningful is another one that we really track. And then we're trying to build this through testing through experimenting with this market segment. You know, this current time with pandemic definitely has a little bit of a twist. But it also opens us up to really be very cautious about this persona that's actually so much in focus. As their, you know, we see signs of healthcare heroes and yes, yes, how much they are, you know, a key element of our frontline and we never look at them as that in the system's all skewed and all the other conversations, but at the end, you're really just talking from our lens, about a learner and a learner whose context has now become suddenly very, very strict
Jeff Hrusko :
10:58
and after We talked about a week ago and I was thinking about that in the in the context of COVID 19. And us being in the, the peak pandemic period right now, and I don't know if you've incorporated any of that into it, but it seems like this type of thing, especially when it comes to all the new behaviors and this is probably it might not be applicable to medical people because I feel like they do a lot of these procedures anyway, but you know, you know, glow mask, especially sanitizer, washing your hands on touching your face, all those sorts of things if you could kind of, because I know that I have blind spots in that moving through my day. And I'm sure the frontline workers too can
Niraj Swami :
11:53
absolutely You know, I think that's been a it's a two folder, double sided coin. As they say, to give them the blind spots that are obvious, especially around this time, around some clinical aspects, right, like, you know, what kind of conditions are likely to pose as a risk for conditions that related to this outbreak. And and looking out for those particular factors from their day to day practices, one aspect of it, but you know, a pretty serendipitous, but a good serendipitous aspect of our solution has been this idea of rewarding them with something that is a blind spot of actually happiness and your surprise. So one thing that we push in the app in our solution is not learning. It's actually random words of kindness. And our every once in a while, you know, they'll go to the app, and they'll look up something that's risky around clinical heavy stuff. But there's an escape button, and that escape button is where they see Random messages, we have YouTube clips, we have little mini games that everything is meant to be three to four minutes or less, sometimes even 20 seconds. They have messages from family members, we open this up to what we call them as our angels that really go after and help out these healthcare heroes stay motivated. It's kind of like that 7pm or 8pm cheer you heard first few weeks of the pandemic when people would turn on lights and turn up music and sing from their balconies and really just cheering on the healthcare of frontline workers. We had more from that a bit and took it a little further and said Is this something that will catalyze learning because now you're creating an environment and and some behavioral trigger in the physician that, hey, there's this thing, backtrack where I can not just pick up on things that make me just remind me of the things I already know, relevant to my day to day but I can also escape and see something funny from before. Without knowing would be there's a surprise element that behavioral economics hook. You know, our advisor is a very distinguished professor, Assistant Professor of practitioner and behavioral economics and behavioral science and know she linea Gandhi, she always talks about surprise as a factor that plays into information design
Jeff Hrusko :
14:23
I never really looked at it that way. But I just intuitively that seems like an amazing idea. Just a little spark of joy at random times. Wow, that's really a phenomenal idea. I mean, a lot of us and I do sometimes to start the day out with like an affirmation, but that's a plan but just to see like a little surprise, and actually, when I went to your website, I wasn't sure what that was and then to ask you about that, but that was the angels portrait where you could send a positive message to Somebody in this on the front lines. Beautiful Thing and I'm sure one statement comes in on that. I have a feeling that isn't an amazing motivational strategy. Right there. This is the strategy of a pleasant surprise.
Niraj Swami :
15:16
Yes, yes. Especially in a time when we're looking and seeking human connection. And, you know, I think you know, we talk about certain values, we evaluate adapt track, and I always talk about and bring about the concept of connectedness, this idea that, you know, everything about us today, especially in this time, is what how connected we feel, not just with other people, but with brands, with ourselves with our future self. All this all these connections generate data, but they also generate signals signals that can drive us to do things. One thing that we saw Jeff in in our early study was when we opened this up this angel answer into that track the number of people that either have a physician or a frontline worker in their family, or know somebody and everybody has a primary care, most of us have a primary care physician, or have associated to a hospital, or a system or a medical professional. And you can always kind of bring that connection for that person to hear from us in a time where there's no office visits. When we first did that a few months ago, and no office visits and completely locked away from real people real interactions. There's telehealth there is you know, this virtual but to get that surprise bit suddenly feels me to be a little bit more attention to you know, what I think we can get to this is going to be fun and keep this positive. We're not promising any sort of, you know, lofty goal that you have these positive messages are what you need, but it's one more signal from your connections.
Jeff Hrusko :
16:59
It almost reminds We have it in the depths of this one and when this first started the lockdown, and it was a little cold out and I was taking a walk. And I was just walking in this little alley I was bouncing a ball Krishna still fall just eat some exercise with the gyms close and look down and there was a rock with a heart painted on it. And Nanda that make my day I felt such a connection to whoever did that. And actually since then I started doing them myself finding a cool little rock and painting hearts on it and leaving them around. Because to spread that kind of a joy. I think it's a positive butterfly effect. And it's also just neat. So you right now we're in the pilot stage on this, but as it is being piloted. When are you in the market now or when do you think this product will be fully deployed?
Niraj Swami :
17:56
As we speak actually, we're in the middle of our third round of Closed betas as we call them really selectively pulling through folks that are, are part of this journey, understanding the messaging, you know, figuring out, I'm a Product minded guy, I think about iterable, iterative development, going through, really understanding user needs from the standpoint of what they are trying to tell us words versus what they're saying. And we're in this process of going through this closed beta, we should be a couple weeks open for access for any physician that cares about blind spot risks from clinical, administrative and personal moments.
Jeff Hrusko :
18:41
And I know from my experience anytime I've designed something and really contacted the end user and got input, I always end up someplace different from where I thought I would be, and it's usually a beautiful thing. So throughout this process, is there anything that surprised you Learn, carry forward.
Niraj Swami :
19:04
Yeah, I think we know we started with the assumption that privacy, my data me, this idea of self that people have about how much data, how much data on their activities on the web and how much of that should be governed by themselves. really started off with a few remember a couple years ago when blockchain was the thing. It really started from that concept that we're going to give you we're going to give you the power of owning and leveraging your data to tell yourself and take yourself where you should go. However, we've learned that that's, that's a good bet you experience over time. If you start off with that, and you better be predicting people's identities and take care of things that are really real pain points with blind spots. It really is a learning product. And so we've we've kind of been able to through this journey, understand what is this learner trying to on a day to day basis, the entire the one feature we have about where users can call in adapt, track and use this entire experience this learning journey via their phone, hands free without a screen, actually is a learning that came from conversations with these folks. And it was funny, we were doing customer interviews and user interviews early on. And I want to say, majority of our users would end up taking calls when when either they were doing something else, like, you know, waiting for pizza to arrive and give us some thoughts or driving home. You know, we had an emergency medicine, physicians, and they would be driving home and they would take the call. And it wasn't that moment, we realized we have the time to do these, these personal things that are important to them in that window and normally it would just be you know, an hour or 40 or 30 minutes of NPR nothing wrong with that. But what if we give them something that was their own in that window? That learning game entirely from those conversations. I mean, we, we always wanted to do this assistant entity that felt like this virtual sidekick you'd have, but for the Mac so quickly into something that's hands free, and to really push our energy into figuring out what that experience looks and feels like. It was very much something that we learned from the field.
Jeff Hrusko :
21:21
Wow, that is interesting. And I think that's it. That to me seems like a genius idea. And I just know on long journeys on long journeys, if I'm alone in the car, sometimes with Google Assistant, I'll play like a song quiz. I'll ask it questions about quantum physics, or even like some actor just like random stuff. So I think that's capitalizing on that that time. Is, is brilliant. And is that sort of the way it works? Is there a voice recognition thing or are they talking to a live person, when they call in
Niraj Swami :
21:57
it is voice recognition. We've You know, this is why when I when we first talked about adapt track and my take on AI and learning is really AI comes in as assisting in the learning learners journey, not so much replacing the actual learning activity or, or somewhat so predicting what the learner will learn that those are all based on learner behaviors and behaviors can be noisy, we have to be very careful, I get my hand slapped with by superstitions and data scientists on that one. But I believe, you know, with voice recognition with detecting specific keywords, medical terminology, allowing them to create really accurate transcripts through really technologies that do that in other fields, right customer service is able to handle that really well. We can lean on that for for some of our learning stories. So we've done that. And it's been it's been magical. When, when Dr. Cohen our chief medical officer says this is the sport it recognize that special word I said and I said I can't type it, but it is able to
Jeff Hrusko :
23:02
Really? That is amazing. You must have an incredible voice recognition, software running because I know anytime I dictate any multisyllabic words, it will always break it up into something ridiculous. And sort of poetic in a way, like photo photosynthesis or whatever it is to be like photo of your sister.
Niraj Swami :
23:26
We've been blessed with some good friends that have been able to help us out with that stuff. It's a collaborative effort, this this product and we've had some help from our friends at Amazon and Google. So it's been generous.
Jeff Hrusko :
23:38
And you know, you think of it as like any tool that we developed from the start of tools has always been to augment something that that human is not great at. You take the like a flint knife they we don't have claws, right. And so it sounds like even when you go to something like this this assisted, so it seems like more of an assisted technology. More than I mean, it's a two but it's really helping us to see what's difficult for us to see ourselves. Would that be accurate?
Niraj Swami :
24:11
That's that's actually spot on. And I think it's very deliberate. A lot of times, it's like this with the voice recognition for us to turn that feature on, put our focus on it was around not creating more work for the end user. A lot of times, cool sells really well, the first time but cool is really hard to support. Unless it is it's just fun, right? And this is where I have a lot of respect for technology that really is a system especially AI that's assistive because you can avoid some inherent biases and decisions, you know, some inherent noise in the actual garbage in garbage out data. In our case, we've leaned more on, let's look at your day. Let's look at things that you think about. Let's look at things that are on your horizon professionally. And come in with AI and other aspects of AI, not just machine learning, but fuzzy logic, decision trees, things that you normally wouldn't do, you'd have to go through a workshop maybe to figure out, hey, you know, this is what was going on, and bring those entities in your day to day workflows. And you know, one thing we see that those don't really make publications because they're not deep science or, or deep AI or deep learning, as they call it. It really is a broad stroke of AI. And for us to build something that really solves a problem. You know, it allows us to be true to our mission to find product market fit, to find that customer that says that user that says, I love this thing because it does what what I expect it to do. That's, that's where we've leaned in on AI, that's where we've leaned in on assisting their tasks, understanding what they're doing, and then coming in and saying, Hey, you know, Focus on that 20% because the other 80% something we can maybe help navigate for you. When it comes to blind spots and when it comes to learning, that's the extent of its we've put some boundaries to it. And we've put some constraints to what is it that we will do? We're not here to become a google assistant or, or a, or an Alexa or Siri. Hopefully I didn't trigger anybody's devices, but it is not meant to replace those entities. It's not generic.
Jeff Hrusko :
26:29
It's fun. It's very specific. Yep. I'm okay with. I don't want to say, okay, g word will pop up. But Cortana drives me crazy. She is always listening and pops up when I don't call her.
Niraj Swami :
26:49
Yeah, it's happened. We've had we've had a couple of moments where we kind of happen to mute them for good because just you feel creep creeped out a little bit.
Jeff Hrusko :
26:58
Yeah, yeah. Just lay it As always the we're definitely entering the uncanny valley when it comes to AI. But let me ask you this question. This has been on my mind too. What was the impetus of this? Where did you get this idea from? Or did a partner have this idea? Like, how did this come about?
Niraj Swami :
27:18
So this actually, it's, it's a good story because my journey in learning in general, and I come from a background of building solutions in the learning space. So I was I was as part of a learning product back in college launch that flipped it to one of the big five and then moved on to building a lot of learning experiences for enterprises. And in that journey, I would always wonder like this whole the missing pieces behaviors and really finishing the loop on why should I learn and why should I care? And a couple years ago, when then blockchain was really different. thing of the year or the century if they were selling it. There was this this competition, this hackathon. And I built an app that basically was focused on eating healthier, just so that if you posted a picture of what you're just eat, had for lunch or had for dinner, you would actually get learning based on that picture on one how healthy it looked like. So we have some AI there. And second, what can you do to eat better the next time, I'm gonna click off because we every time you would take a better picture of your food next time, you would kind of get some points back some virtual, you know, Bitcoin or virtual ether. And so it was really back in that day when we figured out this this feedback loop and then normally our primary or main investor and I close friend, we just decided to talk about how could we really make this that organizations that want to push learning are no longer pushing learning, but they're, they're creating this behavior loop. So We started off with an enterprise product, we were like, let's figure out a way to help sales staff learn better by plugging into their Salesforce accounts and giving them a learning loop on their sales force and nudging them these these blind spots that might happen when they close deals. We start to get into those conversations, you know, met with a healthcare world and found a great partnership with a couple of healthcare leaders that are very passionate about changing behaviors for the physician. And then a malpractice insurance provider came in and decided to kind of say, hey, this, this works in Geico, why can't we just do this in medical malpractice?
Jeff Hrusko :
29:38
Wow. So this is the equivalent or is this the equivalent of so the driving detection devices that Geico and progressive and everything have gotten people to put in their cars?
Niraj Swami :
29:52
Yeah, absolutely. I think by effect it is. We tried to steer away from that as the starting of the genesis of this button. It really is. effect we've we've stayed close to awareness as our mission we want to make you more aware about your blind spots. But if you're able to take those blind spots and the awareness you have around it to reduce some insurance premium you're paying for that risk or perceived risk. And why not it's a benefit.
Jeff Hrusko :
30:18
So how is the and to me this kind of like a two sided coin in one way is fantastically, it's like the, you know, the the drive action you put in your car, I did that for when my daughter started driving. And they give you a discount right off the bat, right? But of course, they record that data. And then next year, right, they can very easily just up your premium based on whatever they read there. So I guess what I'm saying is, you know, the positions a little leery at all about this as it seemed like big brother's watching, or I mean as the data being shared with the internet company or you don't have to get into it if you don't want to. It's just more out of curiosity.
Niraj Swami :
31:04
I think that's that's where we drew the line with why we started with blockchain. we cared about privacy and self sovereign nature of
Jeff Hrusko :
31:13
their day. Oh, so you are using blockchain technology then to privatize or an almond eyes. Almost gonna work, right? The data?
Niraj Swami :
31:22
Absolutely. Yep.
Right. Yep. We don't put it on a network that is truly like your, you know, an open network like Bitcoin or Ethereum. But we do have this decentralized notion. We also are very clear about we're not we're not trying to sell these these signals of your behaviors to anybody. You have full control of that. And, you know, insurance, medical malpractice, insurance, blind spots, these are things that a different entity might care about, then the physician, sometimes it's their employers at the hospital. The practice, it's a different model. There's different models as I'm learning of how people practice better And physicians practice medicine, the business side of it might worry about it differently. We don't necessarily see that big brother effect here, because we're really not creating any new information from, from their behaviors other than just letting them know these are things you should worry about. So it's no different than having a learning transcript. Now only if you know if a learning transcript gets you into a good school, it's great you will share. So why not give the power to the learner to share that learning transcript and authentic learning transcript to get discounts on malpractice or to unlock other kinds of rewards that we also give? I like
Jeff Hrusko :
32:40
that. Yeah, as long as the thing as long as the individual has that power. That is that that is true. That is fantastic. Where do you see this going from here? Like do you see this? I mean, I can definitely think of places where such type of technology would be incredibly beneficial. Absolutely. Have you any thoughts about the next field? Oh, I mean, it's
Niraj Swami :
33:06
it's hard not to Jeff. It really is. It's one of those things where we started off with this challenge that where are we going to focus because this can really apply to so many different contexts. We pick the healthcare field because we have a stellar team management team at NAB track to support we have our partners, our investors are really in the space. And we all relate to that. Personally, like I said, I come from that family. You know, my wife has a degree in healthcare, all of those things kind of play. And we have a lot of voices that allow us to understand this persona, but we've built this as a platform. So we are all about learning and learning from habits that matter. And to do that, you know, we wanted to pick one specific persona use case context scenario, to establish the groundwork and the framework of doing this for any other entity. Come We're I should say, you know, we are always testing other avenues as an exercise in learning. But it's also shows and we've what we've built this has been with that platform mindset. And we are just our first we're our own first use case customer. Right? So when we do medical, in the industry that we're focused on right now,
Jeff Hrusko :
34:26
it seems like very powerful. I mean, just off the top of my head, not even just industry is right. So it really is any anything where you can gather data based on some kind of input and give feedback to see if your perception is different from what's actually happening. And I'm, like, I could imagine this as working in like behavioral health, cognitive behavioral therapy. Exercise, like you said, that's a brilliant idea. And I think I've actually heard of that before because that might have gotten some attention where you can actually take a picture of food and it gives you some feedback on on. Is that app still around?
Niraj Swami :
35:09
I don't want to use it. We, we it is actually very much around. We've ended up licensing a lot of that logic to another provider that does a lot of this stuff. There's, we we ran into a little bit of a technical wall with the blockchain world there. But other than that, yep, we've converted that into that track. That's what we have. We've taken that and made it into a platform. I can say, you know, we can really turn on any other use case, like you said, quickly, for us, the challenge is not about can we the challenges really focus as early stage companies really worry about that, right? Like for us, it is to get one use case right and have a story that shows this behavior loop in action. And then you're absolutely right. Anytime you have some component of Fear life that generates data that is coming from a source that is not game fybel or, or something you can cheat. You can start really creating a loop, a learning loop. And I don't know,
Jeff Hrusko :
36:16
I don't I don't think we ever quite defined a What do you mean by a learning loop? I think I have an idea of what it is. But I would love to hear you describe what a learning loop is?
Niraj Swami :
36:24
Absolutely. I think for us, the definition of that is to start with an assumption that this is what I'm doing, then collect data from my activity or the reality and to take that data understand what that data is trying to tell us so that we can then adapt or reinforce what we were originally doing our assumptions. That is a constant process. And I I used to refer to this a lot when we were building you know, the previous versions of adapt track and other products that I've built in the past, but it became even more prevalent. The big part of my life involves advising conservation. And as a senior advisor at the Nature Conservancy, I came to learn about this method called the adaptive management cycle. The adaptive management cycle does exactly what I said. It's like a learning loop machine for for conservation work, you have a theory of change, and I'm going to plant so many trees, you put sensors and start measuring some satellite data, you know, what these trees are doing what they might do you use AI and predict the signal from that change. Is it really helping the planet and then adjust whether you should be planting more trees in the same region or not? region are not. Well, that is your learning. Right? Like we
Jeff Hrusko :
37:42
have no idea that the conservation was so high tech,
Niraj Swami :
37:46
now. It's getting real. We are. We're fortunate so many folks in the tech space. Want to save the planet.
Jeff Hrusko :
38:00
Thank God for that somebody has to.
Niraj Swami :
38:03
Oh, it's fun stuff.
Jeff Hrusko :
38:06
Well, I think we covered a lot of ground. Is there anything else you would like to talk about another subject or another area of focus or something you want to tell people about that you're excited about?
Niraj Swami :
38:18
I think really, you know, this has been fun. Jeff, I think we got connected with a mutual friend. Yeah. And I knew when I heard about the work you're doing, Nick takes guts to talk about compliance and a podcast, man. Well done. Good. And it's fun the way you're putting the content together here, not just because you invited me but just the fact that you're thinking about it from a learning angle always intrigues me there's a lot of push were in learning, but this is really a fun place to talk about it. I just think you know, the learning I'm having through the journey and adapt track my advisor ship at the Nature Conservancy and other collaborative collaborations is just all about this current moment we're in, we're all learning. So if we can hone in on that data and start building better learning loops, then we can all be a little bit more aware of who we are and what we want to become that, that has some strange but not too strange. of a connection to, to your better self mindset. You're better version of yourself, which is what learning is all about. Right? So, yes, always good stuff. And I think this, this is fun.
Jeff Hrusko :
39:32
Me too. And I really enjoyed talking with you. And I learned a lot. And that's the beauty of what I'm doing right now is just talking to interesting people like you and getting all this information, and hopefully, uh, having people share it. So thank you so much for your time. And if you'd be up for it, I'd love to talk to you again in a couple months. Absolutely. Always gain good stuff,
Unknown Speaker :
39:54
or Thank you. Thanks for having me. Bye. All right.
Jeff Hrusko :
39:59
I think that went very well. We got I think we have a solid show there.
Niraj Swami :
40:02
Sweet. I'm glad. Yeah, it's happy mispronunciations here and they're just I got so many thoughts racing through my head Jeff,
Jeff Hrusko :
40:09
but same same and that happens with podcasting a lot, but I cleaned things up. So if you want do you want me to shoot you the edited version before I publish an excellent film so you could check it out? Is there anything in particular you want me to cover? I mean, I'll cut out manually in these samples and stuff like that.
Niraj Swami :
40:30
Yeah, that's that's fine. I think we should be good on that. And nothing. There's nothing really I shared I didn't want to. Alright, thank
Jeff Hrusko :
40:37
you. Good. Yeah, yeah, no, cuz it just like I like to go wherever the conversation goes. Oh, and luckily the train. Now the trains are coming. Oh, do you hear that? Yeah. There was one that came while we were talking, but I muted the mic. Yeah, I'm in like the worst place for a bunch of verticals. From the train station.
Niraj Swami :
41:04
Where do you live? By the way? I don't think we ever talked about that.
Jeff Hrusko :
41:06
Oh, yeah, no, I live in New Jersey. I mean, I live in. Yeah, I live in Red Bank. So a little town. That's cool little town. About an hour south of New York. by the ocean, which I love. Yeah, yeah. And you are in Atlanta. Yeah. Chicago. Yeah. Yeah. Who? Hold your breath, man. Yeah, I know the waves coming your way. Yeah, it's scary over there right now.
Niraj Swami :
41:35
It's all the fun stuff. Madness.
Jeff Hrusko :
41:37
is I mean, here the wave is kind of where we are just below the point of growth. The amount of cases first people getting well. It took a lot of work though. And now the law anyway, that's a whole nother conversation.
Niraj Swami :
41:56
But hopefully Yeah, we're each day. We go through We're getting closer to where we don't have to go through this.
Jeff Hrusko :
42:03
Yeah, of course we've been saying that for like three months but yeah, now it's all good. For me it's part and parcel. I'm, I'm cool with it. I could do all my work at home. And I love biking and hiking and kayaking. I still want to do all those things. So nice. It's easy for me. All right, you have a fantastic weekend. Thanks again.
Niraj Swami :
42:23
Same thing me and I look forward to the
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
0:15
Hello and welcome to another episode of cogs. This is Jeff Hrusko, your host and this is a show where we discuss how we learn why we don't at times and some of the things that make the difference. And today I'm joined by Niraj Swami who is CEO of Adapt tract. A fascinating company, who designs learning which is backed by a AI that tracks people's habits and talents. And right now, he's primarily focused on the medical industry and doctors. Hi, thank you for joining. Hi, Jeff. Thanks for having me here. Hi, everybody.
Niraj Swami :
0:58
You're very welcome.
Jeff Hrusko :
1:00
So you do a lot of things, but maybe you could tell me a little bit about what this is how you leverage a AI to teach very busy people and people who who have a lot of education, additional skills, or what are you teaching them? Absolutely. So the the concept of adapt track came from this idea of blind spots and really just nudging habits that matter by surfacing information from our day to day data. So the premise is really simple. Everything we do, generates data. And if we give ourselves the opportunity to learn from it, we can make a lot of sense of it. What do you mean by by blind spots? Things we might think we know but they are obvious. They might be easy. They might be those things we were
Niraj Swami :
2:00
Like I knew it, huh. In our presence of mind, I guess.
Jeff Hrusko :
2:06
I think I understand as a podcast host the first couple episodes I did, I realized some vocal tics that I had that I was totally blind to. So I think sometimes people have to kind of see or have like a third party or an application kind of will allow you to look at things in a different way. Is that similar to what the AI does? Absolutely. And I think we're using the term AI when it comes to that track and the workout that I do, in a little broader sense. It's really thinking about cognitive technologies, thinking about computer software and algorithm driven logic. And that's really where the blind spots kind of factor in right back. I think it's, we think that we are doing something but our
Niraj Swami :
2:59
Data seems to tell something else, especially if the data is accurate enough.
Jeff Hrusko :
3:05
So it's a little bit of a disconnect between the story we tell ourselves and the actual behaviors that
Niraj Swami :
3:14
Absolutely whether it's a story we want to tell ourselves or it's an identity, we want to make a change that we want to adapt to.
Jeff Hrusko :
3:24
That that's so prevalent, because we all because we've, I've had some discussions just a bit ago about personal biases. And there's so much that it's so hard to reflection is a difficult thing. And even if we think we're good at it, sometimes it's very difficult, especially when things are unconscious unconscious habits that we have that just kind of sit below the surface.
Niraj Swami :
3:51
So tell me a little bit about how does this go on a mobile device, as a doctor, hang in with them.
Jeff Hrusko :
4:00
What is that process? Like?
Niraj Swami :
4:03
Absolutely, yeah, this is actually, you know, very, in order to answer that question, we really had to think about this learner to take the position. And this is a person that is extremely short on time, managing a lot of simultaneous activity switching between patients, which themselves bring a new and a whole new different level of stress focus
requirements, and then you have technology stack that's starting to show up for the physician persona, that the electronic medical record system, it really was a starting point for us to think about the user experience to be, you know, let's not give them one more thing. So we've we've built it in a way that it's as easy as going to a website like you were browsing the web, and we've also opened it up in a way where you can call in a number and get it in a hands free way.
Thinking really about this learner that might be in the middle of some other tasks, maybe they can pick up on their blind spots and learn from them while they're driving to work, or they're reading up on news in the morning. Aspects where we can kind of fit fit in their lives, as opposed to actually expect them to take this on. And that's just you know, that's, that's,
Jeff Hrusko :
5:22
that's one thing you said, there's is such a thing as, as a compliance trainer that I get so much and very well justified. Not another thing. I just don't need you to give me another thing. And I think from the learners perspective, and definitely from an adult learner perspective, you always have that what's in it for me here like what what am i gaining by doing this? So what do you think your users or what do they feel like they're gaining from using this platform?
Niraj Swami :
5:58
That's really a that's Really the golden question. We believe that we're we're treading this very thin line between compliance and curiosity. And and this this thin line where we want them to know these blind spots that blind spots that lower their risk, perceived risk around burnout, administrative clinical aspects of their day to day. But we need them to be curious about it. And so, you know, if we try to package up learning and assume that we're just going to give them a nice little course on blind spots to watch out for in their day to day practice, it might be the content that they need, but not the modality and the experience. And so for us, it really has been about understanding the learner persona but also understanding their context understanding and going really deep into the day, a week, a month, a year in the life of physician.
Jeff Hrusko :
6:58
That's something beautiful that you said. Curiosity, not just compliance, I'm going to do something with that. I love that it actually reminded me I had this this boss A while ago and he said, You have to have indefatigable curiosity, which I don't know if I ever pronounced that word. Right. But I, but I absolutely love that. Love that word. So what is the adaption rate on this? Like, how long has it been out? And how do you know that sort of KPIs? Key Performance Indicators? Do you have any out there to see that this is working? What is the response been from the the learners?
Niraj Swami :
7:42
Absolutely, we've been, I would say, multiple rounds of testing. And the whole idea of building a learning platform or learning assistant for a physician has been a learning process in itself. We've gone through this a couple of ways we initially launched very hands off, non tech low tech Manual version in traditional entrepreneurial world kind of see, in typical entrepreneurial world, you see, this idea that you do things that don't scale. I think Reed Hoffman talks about this. A lot of you do things that don't scale first to learn how you can really reach the audience and figure out what is it that the real pain point is, and I think we're still on that journey of identifying what that specific pain point is that we're going after. But I'll give you one KPI that actually helped us rethink a little bit of our approach. And it was really monumental when we we added a chief medical officer on staff really put the voice of learning in the product itself. We have been very deliberate about that, in understanding what is their context, it's one data point, but it has given us that particular data point has given us so much learning around the use case of this. We're working with EHR electronic health record systems, to really access a large pool of physicians. We're opening up our pilot to, you know, 2700 physicians and getting data on what is it that they really like about this experience of knowing blind spots, you've got, you know, a certain demographic that knows their blind spots are just are aware of their blind spot. And it's not that novel to them. But when you go to an earlier demographic, for instance, somebody that's just entered the the work force somebody who is new to this field and are actually apprehensive and a little little worried about am I going to burn out this workload is not like residency or this work workload is not like my fellowship. I come from a family of physicians.
My sister is a practicing endocrinologist and I've seen her go through her entire training and learning journey. And as she comes into the workforce and starts practicing the last few years, you see that the things that she thinks about on a daily basis is it's really like any any any of us really we're, we're looking to get more insights. From our day to day our KPI. Around engagement is very important learner engagement, physician engagement or KPI around how long does it take for the physician to find information or aged something meaningful is another one that we really track. And then we're trying to build this through testing through experimenting with this market segment. You know, this current time with pandemic definitely has a little bit of a twist. But it also opens us up to really be very cautious about this persona that's actually so much in focus. As their, you know, we see signs of healthcare heroes and yes, yes, how much they are, you know, a key element of our frontline and we never look at them as that in the system's all skewed and all the other conversations, but at the end, you're really just talking from our lens, about a learner and a learner whose context has now become suddenly very, very strict
Jeff Hrusko :
10:58
and after We talked about a week ago and I was thinking about that in the in the context of COVID 19. And us being in the, the peak pandemic period right now, and I don't know if you've incorporated any of that into it, but it seems like this type of thing, especially when it comes to all the new behaviors and this is probably it might not be applicable to medical people because I feel like they do a lot of these procedures anyway, but you know, you know, glow mask, especially sanitizer, washing your hands on touching your face, all those sorts of things if you could kind of, because I know that I have blind spots in that moving through my day. And I'm sure the frontline workers too can
Niraj Swami :
11:53
absolutely You know, I think that's been a it's a two folder, double sided coin. As they say, to give them the blind spots that are obvious, especially around this time, around some clinical aspects, right, like, you know, what kind of conditions are likely to pose as a risk for conditions that related to this outbreak. And and looking out for those particular factors from their day to day practices, one aspect of it, but you know, a pretty serendipitous, but a good serendipitous aspect of our solution has been this idea of rewarding them with something that is a blind spot of actually happiness and your surprise. So one thing that we push in the app in our solution is not learning. It's actually random words of kindness. And our every once in a while, you know, they'll go to the app, and they'll look up something that's risky around clinical heavy stuff. But there's an escape button, and that escape button is where they see Random messages, we have YouTube clips, we have little mini games that everything is meant to be three to four minutes or less, sometimes even 20 seconds. They have messages from family members, we open this up to what we call them as our angels that really go after and help out these healthcare heroes stay motivated. It's kind of like that 7pm or 8pm cheer you heard first few weeks of the pandemic when people would turn on lights and turn up music and sing from their balconies and really just cheering on the healthcare of frontline workers. We had more from that a bit and took it a little further and said Is this something that will catalyze learning because now you're creating an environment and and some behavioral trigger in the physician that, hey, there's this thing, backtrack where I can not just pick up on things that make me just remind me of the things I already know, relevant to my day to day but I can also escape and see something funny from before. Without knowing would be there's a surprise element that behavioral economics hook. You know, our advisor is a very distinguished professor, Assistant Professor of practitioner and behavioral economics and behavioral science and know she linea Gandhi, she always talks about surprise as a factor that plays into information design
Jeff Hrusko :
14:23
I never really looked at it that way. But I just intuitively that seems like an amazing idea. Just a little spark of joy at random times. Wow, that's really a phenomenal idea. I mean, a lot of us and I do sometimes to start the day out with like an affirmation, but that's a plan but just to see like a little surprise, and actually, when I went to your website, I wasn't sure what that was and then to ask you about that, but that was the angels portrait where you could send a positive message to Somebody in this on the front lines. Beautiful Thing and I'm sure one statement comes in on that. I have a feeling that isn't an amazing motivational strategy. Right there. This is the strategy of a pleasant surprise.
Niraj Swami :
15:16
Yes, yes. Especially in a time when we're looking and seeking human connection. And, you know, I think you know, we talk about certain values, we evaluate adapt track, and I always talk about and bring about the concept of connectedness, this idea that, you know, everything about us today, especially in this time, is what how connected we feel, not just with other people, but with brands, with ourselves with our future self. All this all these connections generate data, but they also generate signals signals that can drive us to do things. One thing that we saw Jeff in in our early study was when we opened this up this angel answer into that track the number of people that either have a physician or a frontline worker in their family, or know somebody and everybody has a primary care, most of us have a primary care physician, or have associated to a hospital, or a system or a medical professional. And you can always kind of bring that connection for that person to hear from us in a time where there's no office visits. When we first did that a few months ago, and no office visits and completely locked away from real people real interactions. There's telehealth there is you know, this virtual but to get that surprise bit suddenly feels me to be a little bit more attention to you know, what I think we can get to this is going to be fun and keep this positive. We're not promising any sort of, you know, lofty goal that you have these positive messages are what you need, but it's one more signal from your connections.
Jeff Hrusko :
16:59
It almost reminds We have it in the depths of this one and when this first started the lockdown, and it was a little cold out and I was taking a walk. And I was just walking in this little alley I was bouncing a ball Krishna still fall just eat some exercise with the gyms close and look down and there was a rock with a heart painted on it. And Nanda that make my day I felt such a connection to whoever did that. And actually since then I started doing them myself finding a cool little rock and painting hearts on it and leaving them around. Because to spread that kind of a joy. I think it's a positive butterfly effect. And it's also just neat. So you right now we're in the pilot stage on this, but as it is being piloted. When are you in the market now or when do you think this product will be fully deployed?
Niraj Swami :
17:56
As we speak actually, we're in the middle of our third round of Closed betas as we call them really selectively pulling through folks that are, are part of this journey, understanding the messaging, you know, figuring out, I'm a Product minded guy, I think about iterable, iterative development, going through, really understanding user needs from the standpoint of what they are trying to tell us words versus what they're saying. And we're in this process of going through this closed beta, we should be a couple weeks open for access for any physician that cares about blind spot risks from clinical, administrative and personal moments.
Jeff Hrusko :
18:41
And I know from my experience anytime I've designed something and really contacted the end user and got input, I always end up someplace different from where I thought I would be, and it's usually a beautiful thing. So throughout this process, is there anything that surprised you Learn, carry forward.
Niraj Swami :
19:04
Yeah, I think we know we started with the assumption that privacy, my data me, this idea of self that people have about how much data, how much data on their activities on the web and how much of that should be governed by themselves. really started off with a few remember a couple years ago when blockchain was the thing. It really started from that concept that we're going to give you we're going to give you the power of owning and leveraging your data to tell yourself and take yourself where you should go. However, we've learned that that's, that's a good bet you experience over time. If you start off with that, and you better be predicting people's identities and take care of things that are really real pain points with blind spots. It really is a learning product. And so we've we've kind of been able to through this journey, understand what is this learner trying to on a day to day basis, the entire the one feature we have about where users can call in adapt, track and use this entire experience this learning journey via their phone, hands free without a screen, actually is a learning that came from conversations with these folks. And it was funny, we were doing customer interviews and user interviews early on. And I want to say, majority of our users would end up taking calls when when either they were doing something else, like, you know, waiting for pizza to arrive and give us some thoughts or driving home. You know, we had an emergency medicine, physicians, and they would be driving home and they would take the call. And it wasn't that moment, we realized we have the time to do these, these personal things that are important to them in that window and normally it would just be you know, an hour or 40 or 30 minutes of NPR nothing wrong with that. But what if we give them something that was their own in that window? That learning game entirely from those conversations. I mean, we, we always wanted to do this assistant entity that felt like this virtual sidekick you'd have, but for the Mac so quickly into something that's hands free, and to really push our energy into figuring out what that experience looks and feels like. It was very much something that we learned from the field.
Jeff Hrusko :
21:21
Wow, that is interesting. And I think that's it. That to me seems like a genius idea. And I just know on long journeys on long journeys, if I'm alone in the car, sometimes with Google Assistant, I'll play like a song quiz. I'll ask it questions about quantum physics, or even like some actor just like random stuff. So I think that's capitalizing on that that time. Is, is brilliant. And is that sort of the way it works? Is there a voice recognition thing or are they talking to a live person, when they call in
Niraj Swami :
21:57
it is voice recognition. We've You know, this is why when I when we first talked about adapt track and my take on AI and learning is really AI comes in as assisting in the learning learners journey, not so much replacing the actual learning activity or, or somewhat so predicting what the learner will learn that those are all based on learner behaviors and behaviors can be noisy, we have to be very careful, I get my hand slapped with by superstitions and data scientists on that one. But I believe, you know, with voice recognition with detecting specific keywords, medical terminology, allowing them to create really accurate transcripts through really technologies that do that in other fields, right customer service is able to handle that really well. We can lean on that for for some of our learning stories. So we've done that. And it's been it's been magical. When, when Dr. Cohen our chief medical officer says this is the sport it recognize that special word I said and I said I can't type it, but it is able to
Jeff Hrusko :
23:02
Really? That is amazing. You must have an incredible voice recognition, software running because I know anytime I dictate any multisyllabic words, it will always break it up into something ridiculous. And sort of poetic in a way, like photo photosynthesis or whatever it is to be like photo of your sister.
Niraj Swami :
23:26
We've been blessed with some good friends that have been able to help us out with that stuff. It's a collaborative effort, this this product and we've had some help from our friends at Amazon and Google. So it's been generous.
Jeff Hrusko :
23:38
And you know, you think of it as like any tool that we developed from the start of tools has always been to augment something that that human is not great at. You take the like a flint knife they we don't have claws, right. And so it sounds like even when you go to something like this this assisted, so it seems like more of an assisted technology. More than I mean, it's a two but it's really helping us to see what's difficult for us to see ourselves. Would that be accurate?
Niraj Swami :
24:11
That's that's actually spot on. And I think it's very deliberate. A lot of times, it's like this with the voice recognition for us to turn that feature on, put our focus on it was around not creating more work for the end user. A lot of times, cool sells really well, the first time but cool is really hard to support. Unless it is it's just fun, right? And this is where I have a lot of respect for technology that really is a system especially AI that's assistive because you can avoid some inherent biases and decisions, you know, some inherent noise in the actual garbage in garbage out data. In our case, we've leaned more on, let's look at your day. Let's look at things that you think about. Let's look at things that are on your horizon professionally. And come in with AI and other aspects of AI, not just machine learning, but fuzzy logic, decision trees, things that you normally wouldn't do, you'd have to go through a workshop maybe to figure out, hey, you know, this is what was going on, and bring those entities in your day to day workflows. And you know, one thing we see that those don't really make publications because they're not deep science or, or deep AI or deep learning, as they call it. It really is a broad stroke of AI. And for us to build something that really solves a problem. You know, it allows us to be true to our mission to find product market fit, to find that customer that says that user that says, I love this thing because it does what what I expect it to do. That's, that's where we've leaned in on AI, that's where we've leaned in on assisting their tasks, understanding what they're doing, and then coming in and saying, Hey, you know, Focus on that 20% because the other 80% something we can maybe help navigate for you. When it comes to blind spots and when it comes to learning, that's the extent of its we've put some boundaries to it. And we've put some constraints to what is it that we will do? We're not here to become a google assistant or, or a, or an Alexa or Siri. Hopefully I didn't trigger anybody's devices, but it is not meant to replace those entities. It's not generic.
Jeff Hrusko :
26:29
It's fun. It's very specific. Yep. I'm okay with. I don't want to say, okay, g word will pop up. But Cortana drives me crazy. She is always listening and pops up when I don't call her.
Niraj Swami :
26:49
Yeah, it's happened. We've had we've had a couple of moments where we kind of happen to mute them for good because just you feel creep creeped out a little bit.
Jeff Hrusko :
26:58
Yeah, yeah. Just lay it As always the we're definitely entering the uncanny valley when it comes to AI. But let me ask you this question. This has been on my mind too. What was the impetus of this? Where did you get this idea from? Or did a partner have this idea? Like, how did this come about?
Niraj Swami :
27:18
So this actually, it's, it's a good story because my journey in learning in general, and I come from a background of building solutions in the learning space. So I was I was as part of a learning product back in college launch that flipped it to one of the big five and then moved on to building a lot of learning experiences for enterprises. And in that journey, I would always wonder like this whole the missing pieces behaviors and really finishing the loop on why should I learn and why should I care? And a couple years ago, when then blockchain was really different. thing of the year or the century if they were selling it. There was this this competition, this hackathon. And I built an app that basically was focused on eating healthier, just so that if you posted a picture of what you're just eat, had for lunch or had for dinner, you would actually get learning based on that picture on one how healthy it looked like. So we have some AI there. And second, what can you do to eat better the next time, I'm gonna click off because we every time you would take a better picture of your food next time, you would kind of get some points back some virtual, you know, Bitcoin or virtual ether. And so it was really back in that day when we figured out this this feedback loop and then normally our primary or main investor and I close friend, we just decided to talk about how could we really make this that organizations that want to push learning are no longer pushing learning, but they're, they're creating this behavior loop. So We started off with an enterprise product, we were like, let's figure out a way to help sales staff learn better by plugging into their Salesforce accounts and giving them a learning loop on their sales force and nudging them these these blind spots that might happen when they close deals. We start to get into those conversations, you know, met with a healthcare world and found a great partnership with a couple of healthcare leaders that are very passionate about changing behaviors for the physician. And then a malpractice insurance provider came in and decided to kind of say, hey, this, this works in Geico, why can't we just do this in medical malpractice?
Jeff Hrusko :
29:38
Wow. So this is the equivalent or is this the equivalent of so the driving detection devices that Geico and progressive and everything have gotten people to put in their cars?
Niraj Swami :
29:52
Yeah, absolutely. I think by effect it is. We tried to steer away from that as the starting of the genesis of this button. It really is. effect we've we've stayed close to awareness as our mission we want to make you more aware about your blind spots. But if you're able to take those blind spots and the awareness you have around it to reduce some insurance premium you're paying for that risk or perceived risk. And why not it's a benefit.
Jeff Hrusko :
30:18
So how is the and to me this kind of like a two sided coin in one way is fantastically, it's like the, you know, the the drive action you put in your car, I did that for when my daughter started driving. And they give you a discount right off the bat, right? But of course, they record that data. And then next year, right, they can very easily just up your premium based on whatever they read there. So I guess what I'm saying is, you know, the positions a little leery at all about this as it seemed like big brother's watching, or I mean as the data being shared with the internet company or you don't have to get into it if you don't want to. It's just more out of curiosity.
Niraj Swami :
31:04
I think that's that's where we drew the line with why we started with blockchain. we cared about privacy and self sovereign nature of
Jeff Hrusko :
31:13
their day. Oh, so you are using blockchain technology then to privatize or an almond eyes. Almost gonna work, right? The data?
Niraj Swami :
31:22
Absolutely. Yep.
Right. Yep. We don't put it on a network that is truly like your, you know, an open network like Bitcoin or Ethereum. But we do have this decentralized notion. We also are very clear about we're not we're not trying to sell these these signals of your behaviors to anybody. You have full control of that. And, you know, insurance, medical malpractice, insurance, blind spots, these are things that a different entity might care about, then the physician, sometimes it's their employers at the hospital. The practice, it's a different model. There's different models as I'm learning of how people practice better And physicians practice medicine, the business side of it might worry about it differently. We don't necessarily see that big brother effect here, because we're really not creating any new information from, from their behaviors other than just letting them know these are things you should worry about. So it's no different than having a learning transcript. Now only if you know if a learning transcript gets you into a good school, it's great you will share. So why not give the power to the learner to share that learning transcript and authentic learning transcript to get discounts on malpractice or to unlock other kinds of rewards that we also give? I like
Jeff Hrusko :
32:40
that. Yeah, as long as the thing as long as the individual has that power. That is that that is true. That is fantastic. Where do you see this going from here? Like do you see this? I mean, I can definitely think of places where such type of technology would be incredibly beneficial. Absolutely. Have you any thoughts about the next field? Oh, I mean, it's
Niraj Swami :
33:06
it's hard not to Jeff. It really is. It's one of those things where we started off with this challenge that where are we going to focus because this can really apply to so many different contexts. We pick the healthcare field because we have a stellar team management team at NAB track to support we have our partners, our investors are really in the space. And we all relate to that. Personally, like I said, I come from that family. You know, my wife has a degree in healthcare, all of those things kind of play. And we have a lot of voices that allow us to understand this persona, but we've built this as a platform. So we are all about learning and learning from habits that matter. And to do that, you know, we wanted to pick one specific persona use case context scenario, to establish the groundwork and the framework of doing this for any other entity. Come We're I should say, you know, we are always testing other avenues as an exercise in learning. But it's also shows and we've what we've built this has been with that platform mindset. And we are just our first we're our own first use case customer. Right? So when we do medical, in the industry that we're focused on right now,
Jeff Hrusko :
34:26
it seems like very powerful. I mean, just off the top of my head, not even just industry is right. So it really is any anything where you can gather data based on some kind of input and give feedback to see if your perception is different from what's actually happening. And I'm, like, I could imagine this as working in like behavioral health, cognitive behavioral therapy. Exercise, like you said, that's a brilliant idea. And I think I've actually heard of that before because that might have gotten some attention where you can actually take a picture of food and it gives you some feedback on on. Is that app still around?
Niraj Swami :
35:09
I don't want to use it. We, we it is actually very much around. We've ended up licensing a lot of that logic to another provider that does a lot of this stuff. There's, we we ran into a little bit of a technical wall with the blockchain world there. But other than that, yep, we've converted that into that track. That's what we have. We've taken that and made it into a platform. I can say, you know, we can really turn on any other use case, like you said, quickly, for us, the challenge is not about can we the challenges really focus as early stage companies really worry about that, right? Like for us, it is to get one use case right and have a story that shows this behavior loop in action. And then you're absolutely right. Anytime you have some component of Fear life that generates data that is coming from a source that is not game fybel or, or something you can cheat. You can start really creating a loop, a learning loop. And I don't know,
Jeff Hrusko :
36:16
I don't I don't think we ever quite defined a What do you mean by a learning loop? I think I have an idea of what it is. But I would love to hear you describe what a learning loop is?
Niraj Swami :
36:24
Absolutely. I think for us, the definition of that is to start with an assumption that this is what I'm doing, then collect data from my activity or the reality and to take that data understand what that data is trying to tell us so that we can then adapt or reinforce what we were originally doing our assumptions. That is a constant process. And I I used to refer to this a lot when we were building you know, the previous versions of adapt track and other products that I've built in the past, but it became even more prevalent. The big part of my life involves advising conservation. And as a senior advisor at the Nature Conservancy, I came to learn about this method called the adaptive management cycle. The adaptive management cycle does exactly what I said. It's like a learning loop machine for for conservation work, you have a theory of change, and I'm going to plant so many trees, you put sensors and start measuring some satellite data, you know, what these trees are doing what they might do you use AI and predict the signal from that change. Is it really helping the planet and then adjust whether you should be planting more trees in the same region or not? region are not. Well, that is your learning. Right? Like we
Jeff Hrusko :
37:42
have no idea that the conservation was so high tech,
Niraj Swami :
37:46
now. It's getting real. We are. We're fortunate so many folks in the tech space. Want to save the planet.
Jeff Hrusko :
38:00
Thank God for that somebody has to.
Niraj Swami :
38:03
Oh, it's fun stuff.
Jeff Hrusko :
38:06
Well, I think we covered a lot of ground. Is there anything else you would like to talk about another subject or another area of focus or something you want to tell people about that you're excited about?
Niraj Swami :
38:18
I think really, you know, this has been fun. Jeff, I think we got connected with a mutual friend. Yeah. And I knew when I heard about the work you're doing, Nick takes guts to talk about compliance and a podcast, man. Well done. Good. And it's fun the way you're putting the content together here, not just because you invited me but just the fact that you're thinking about it from a learning angle always intrigues me there's a lot of push were in learning, but this is really a fun place to talk about it. I just think you know, the learning I'm having through the journey and adapt track my advisor ship at the Nature Conservancy and other collaborative collaborations is just all about this current moment we're in, we're all learning. So if we can hone in on that data and start building better learning loops, then we can all be a little bit more aware of who we are and what we want to become that, that has some strange but not too strange. of a connection to, to your better self mindset. You're better version of yourself, which is what learning is all about. Right? So, yes, always good stuff. And I think this, this is fun.
Jeff Hrusko :
39:32
Me too. And I really enjoyed talking with you. And I learned a lot. And that's the beauty of what I'm doing right now is just talking to interesting people like you and getting all this information, and hopefully, uh, having people share it. So thank you so much for your time. And if you'd be up for it, I'd love to talk to you again in a couple months. Absolutely. Always gain good stuff,
Unknown Speaker :
39:54
or Thank you. Thanks for having me. Bye. All right.
Jeff Hrusko :
39:59
I think that went very well. We got I think we have a solid show there.
Niraj Swami :
40:02
Sweet. I'm glad. Yeah, it's happy mispronunciations here and they're just I got so many thoughts racing through my head Jeff,
Jeff Hrusko :
40:09
but same same and that happens with podcasting a lot, but I cleaned things up. So if you want do you want me to shoot you the edited version before I publish an excellent film so you could check it out? Is there anything in particular you want me to cover? I mean, I'll cut out manually in these samples and stuff like that.
Niraj Swami :
40:30
Yeah, that's that's fine. I think we should be good on that. And nothing. There's nothing really I shared I didn't want to. Alright, thank
Jeff Hrusko :
40:37
you. Good. Yeah, yeah, no, cuz it just like I like to go wherever the conversation goes. Oh, and luckily the train. Now the trains are coming. Oh, do you hear that? Yeah. There was one that came while we were talking, but I muted the mic. Yeah, I'm in like the worst place for a bunch of verticals. From the train station.
Niraj Swami :
41:04
Where do you live? By the way? I don't think we ever talked about that.
Jeff Hrusko :
41:06
Oh, yeah, no, I live in New Jersey. I mean, I live in. Yeah, I live in Red Bank. So a little town. That's cool little town. About an hour south of New York. by the ocean, which I love. Yeah, yeah. And you are in Atlanta. Yeah. Chicago. Yeah. Yeah. Who? Hold your breath, man. Yeah, I know the waves coming your way. Yeah, it's scary over there right now.
Niraj Swami :
41:35
It's all the fun stuff. Madness.
Jeff Hrusko :
41:37
is I mean, here the wave is kind of where we are just below the point of growth. The amount of cases first people getting well. It took a lot of work though. And now the law anyway, that's a whole nother conversation.
Niraj Swami :
41:56
But hopefully Yeah, we're each day. We go through We're getting closer to where we don't have to go through this.
Jeff Hrusko :
42:03
Yeah, of course we've been saying that for like three months but yeah, now it's all good. For me it's part and parcel. I'm, I'm cool with it. I could do all my work at home. And I love biking and hiking and kayaking. I still want to do all those things. So nice. It's easy for me. All right, you have a fantastic weekend. Thanks again.
Niraj Swami :
42:23
Same thing me and I look forward to the
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
