This year, the latest health innovations aren't about vaccines or medical devices or holographic surgeries. The latest advances today are more about gaining and maintaining staff.
KMOX's Michael Calhoun reported that some of the biggest innovations are dedicated to solving the healthcare workforce crisis.
At the annual St. Louis Health Innovation Summit, people came together to showcase some of the solutions. One of them is called "Woebot."
"When you register and start using Woebot, Woebot is very clear, 'I'm not human, but I'm gonna be available when you need to speak," said Shytall Shah, Senior Vice President.
Shah said that there are four milllion people who get support from human psychologists, but 600 million people need that support in the U.S. and Canada.
"A majority of our usage on Woebot is actually after 6 p.m. It's when healthcare traditionally closes its doors," Shah said. "The closed sign's on. There's no one availabel to speak. And so we're seeing 70% of our usage actually after business hours."
Another innovation, Shiftmed, helps schedule human nurses. The goal of all these innovations is to keep nurses in the workforce. Shah explained that the industry adds - but also loses - about 700,000 nurses every month.
The way they're trying to mitigate that is to make nursing more like the gig economy, not directly employing them, so nurses can choose their own schedules and work when they want.
Hear more about health and human resource innovations right here in St. Louis from Total Information AM:
Copyright 2022 KMOX (Audacy). All Rights Reserved.
Follow KMOX | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
Listen on the free Audacy app.
Ask your smart speaker to play K M O X.
