HealthTap's platform uses AI to dispense treatment advice

HealthTap, a Palo Alto, California-based company delivering connected health apps, announced a slew of platform updates today at VentureBeat's Transform 2018 conference that "augmented the patient experience" with artificial intelligence. It also revealed that it has served more than seven billion answers to health patients' queries -- nearly one for each human on earth. "It's amazing to consider that what might once have required 7 billion doctor visits can now be achieved digitally thanks to the power of augmented intelligence," Geoff Rutledge, chief medical officer at HealthTap, said. "We're drawing on the shared expertise of … doctors to deliver meaningful insights, but we also understand how important it is to connect directly with a doctor when the time is right. By rewiring the health care experience to be as useful and convenient as your favorite consumer apps, everybody wins." It learns about patients' symptoms over time and directs them to next steps of care -- anything from text-based answers culled from historical data to doctor-authored care guides, treatment reminders, and online videoconference consultations.