Telehealth company Hims & Hers, founded in 2017, is a far cry from where it began. The company made its name by focusing on men’s health concerns, particularly ED meds and hair restoration products. It quickly understood that it needed to broaden its scope. That’s why in 2018, Hims & Hers made a daring move by going into women’s health. They appended “Hers” to their name to highlight this progressive pivot.
As a result of that access, the company has built a huge dataset of anonymized information from millions of patients. This dataset includes multiple metrics such as clinical visits, medications prescribed, and medication effectiveness. Hims & Hers understands AI’s potential to truly transform how healthcare can be delivered and experienced. They view this technology as the next great step toward transforming and meeting more people’s needs.
That’s why two years ago, Hims & Hers created MedMatch, an AI-powered tool that helps physicians suggest mental health-related treatments. This groundbreaking application combines the powerful dataset the company has amassed over the years with a key human touch. Hims & Hers ensures that healthcare professionals remain involved in the decision-making process, thereby instilling confidence in the recommendations provided by the AI.
Together with their partners, the company is pushing the envelope of innovation. It recently hired former Amazon exec Nader Kabbani —state Department of Transportation’s new chief of operations. His hiring aligns with Hims & Hers’ recent focus on expanding its healthcare presence. Its goal is to raise the quality of services that it provides.
Dudum, a key figure at Hims & Hers, emphasized the importance of drawing inspiration from leaders in autonomous driving when developing AI technologies for healthcare.
“I was looking very much at leaders in the autonomous driving space, explicitly because you’re talking about leveraging technology and data and AI in an extremely high-sensitive environment where you have people’s lives at risk,” – Dudum
Elshenawy gives voice to this concern by discussing the role of AI in autonomous vehicles. These vehicles leverage AI technologies to rapidly govern dynamic interactions in complicated, rule-based ecosystems.
“Self-driving cars use AI to make real-time decisions in complex, high-stakes and heavily regulated environments, where earning trust is everything,” – Elshenawy
Elshenawy expanded on the similarities between autonomous driving and healthcare, pointing out that both areas are life or death fields.
“Healthcare operates under the same conditions. You’re dealing with people’s lives, limited resources, and systems under stress. Translating AI into safe, reliable decision-making at scale applies directly to what we’re building at Hims & Hers.” – Elshenawy
Hims & Hers’ AI tools prioritize transparency. They effectively demonstrate to clinicians the evidence and logic unknown to the public that leads to their guidance. Dudum noted the value of this transparency.
“Showing the work and actually providing the kind of context behind the scenes as to what’s driving and what weights are driving the outputs, I think are actually, in many ways, just as valuable as the actual recommendation,” – Dudum
With all of the exciting technological advancements in AI, Dudum admitted that human oversight will always be important.
“There’s a very strict and structured approach when it comes to clinical decision tools within the medical industry, so providers are ultimately, from a regulatory standpoint, still necessary to make all of these clinical judgments and decisions,” – Dudum
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