Tiffany Lundeen, CNM

Bio:  Tiffany Lundeen, CNM, MSN, is based at the University of California, San Francisco, Institute for Global Health Sciences. She is a practicing midwife and public health researcher. In cooperation with nurses, midwives, and doctors in Kenya she developed the Virtual Mentor concept and has received two seed awards to prototype and test it.

Company profile: IGHS at UCSF is an interdisciplinary educational, research and service organization dedicated to improving health and reducing the burden of disease in the world’s most vulnerable populations.

Talk summary: I am looking for partners to develop the world’s first “Virtual Mentor” (VM)–a hands-free, voice-only human-computer decision support tool that assists frontline health care providers as they perform the indicated, time-sensitive actions most likely to reduce morbidity and mortality associated with life-or-death emergencies. Our first proof of concept for VM will be an AI-chatbot combined with a wearable microphone-speaker combination device for hands-free use by nurses and midwives in rural Kenya. A postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) action plan will be the first test use; the VM will guide providers through an algorithmic PPH decision tree. We will build a VM platform that can eventually be used in any global health care context to expand the scope of health workers’ abilities and accelerate uptake of well-aligned programs, medications, and devices that also aim to save lives, by providing a “talking” decision support tool that can increase provider confidence, improve the precision with which protocolized treatments are accomplished, and automatically generate use logs.