Moving Digital Health

Moving Digital Health: Mahshid Yassaei of Tali.ai

Episode Summary

MindSea CEO Reuben Hall sits down with Mahshid Yassaei (CEO and co-founder, Tali.ai) to learn how she’s leveraging artificial intelligence and natural language processing to create innovative healthcare solutions toward improved patient care. Mahshid describes the growth and learning experiences she encountered on the path to becoming an entrepreneur and industry leader. She relates how she and her team approach their game-changing work, and what she believes is coming next for AI in healthcare.

Episode Notes

A computer scientist by trade, Mahshid’s experience as a security software developer informed her co-founding of two companies specializing in healthcare: Evenset in 2015 and Tali.ai in 2019. She holds a Master’s degree in computer science and has a background in cryptography and data security.

With Tali.ai, Mahshid and her team have developed a customizable voice-enabled AI for point of care. This cutting-edge interface solves for major challenges facing physicians, freeing them to spend more time with their patients.

In this episode we’ll discuss the healthcare industry need Tali was created to serve, learn how Mahshid and her co-founder combined their expertise and compiled their team, and hear about the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) challenge that led to the founding of Tali.ai. 

We’ll also explore Tali’s unique capabilities, including: 

• How unstructured content complicates prompt information retrieval, and how Tali approaches that challenge
• How the COVID-19 pandemic served as a pilot opportunity for Tali
• Why Tali provides two different interfaces for all physician users

And unpack some key applications and challenges: 

• Specific patient profiles that can benefit from Tali’s service
• Issues inherent to working in cutting-edge technology
• Potential use cases for technology like Tali’s

Later, Mahshid offers some key thought leadership insights: 

• How she believes we can get more women interested in tech careers
• What her workdays look like as CEO compared to her prior work as a computer scientist
• Effective learning processes while transitioning from a technical role to a business ownership role

Lastly, Mahshid shares:

• Her favorite sources for inspiration and learning in the health tech industry
• What she and her team are focusing on over the next year
• What she’s most excited about for the digital health space in the near future

Links 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mahshidyassaei/?originalSubdomain=ca

https://Tali.ai

https://www.womenofinfluence.ca/2021/03/25/how-this-tech-entrepreneur-is-changing-the-healthcare-landscape/

Quotes

• “In healthcare, there's always a gap between people on the technology side and people that are deep into the healthcare system. Every side is somewhat intimidated by the other side's expertise.”
• “Even if you can save an hour, or half an hour, of physician time, that’s of great value.”
• “You see a lot of patients just Googling the question. And they're not always armed with the knowledge on how to how to validate if the resource is evidence-based or trustworthy or not.”
• “Really understanding all these use cases and building a product that fits perfectly for what they're looking for, that is the main point of focus for us. Scaling and selling, distributing, and all that comes after that, when we have the perfect solution.”
• “That's the benefit of being a practitioner growing to a business leader: you understand your business to the deepest level. That is a benefit not all business owners have.”
• “I'm very excited about the shift to a healthcare system where patients have more agency. . . . all the virtual care solutions are basically there to deliver the care to where the patient is, not where the provider is, which is our current healthcare system. I think that leads to a healthier population overall. And for that reason, it is a very exciting revolution in the healthcare system...