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CRAFTED. is a show about great products and the people who make them. Top technologists reveal how they build game-changing products — and how you can, too. Honored twice by The Webby Awards as a top tech podcast, CRAFTED. is hosted by Dan Blumberg, an entrepreneur, product leader, and former public radio host. Listen to CRAFTED. to find out what it really takes to build great products and companies.
[00:00:00] Jeff Birkeland: I don't take a taxi: that's been reinvented by Uber. Shopping: I'm using Amazon. And so if you go app by app or icon by icon, these different portions of life have been reinvented. Healthcare has not reached that status yet, where if you think of that icon, that's the first place that you think of to go to solve that problem.
[00:00:23] Dan Blumberg: That's Jeff Birkeland. He's the SVP of Product and Platform at Included Health, a company that aims to be the icon on your phone that you first think of when you have a healthcare need. Included Health has more than 2000 employees across both technology and clinical care, and its services are used by many top companies in their employees.
[00:00:41] The goal, create an integrated experience that brings it all together. The integration itself is the innovation, the disjointed nature of healthcare is something Jeff has experienced personally. Like when he asked his surgeon about food,
[00:00:56] Jeff Birkeland: he told me directly like, Hey, the dietician stuff, it's not my thing.
[00:01:01] So our challenge at a place like Included health is how do we make those connections?
[00:01:05] Dan Blumberg: To make those connections. Jeff relies on skills he learned before he got into product. He used to make documentaries. We'll hear how Jeff applies this power of narrative at Included and also at Headspace where he used to lead consumer product.
[00:01:19] Jeff Birkeland: You could be thinking about the experience that a member is gonna get as a movie.
[00:01:26] Dan Blumberg: Welcome to CRAFTED., a show about great products and the people who make them. I'm Dan Blumberg. I'm a product and growth leader, and on CRAFTED., I'm here to bring you stories of founders, makers, and innovators that reveal how they build game changing products — and how you can, too.
CRAFTED. is brought to in partnership with Docker, which helps developers build, share, run, and verify applications anywhere without environment confirmation or management. More than 20 million developers worldwide use Docker’s suite of development, tools, services, and automations to accelerate the delivery of secure applications. Learn more at Docker.com
And CRAFTED. is produced by Modern Product Minds, where my team and I can help you take a new product from zero to one. And beyond. We specialize in early stage product discovery, growth, and experimentation. Learn more and sign up for the CRAFTED. Newsletter at modernproductminds.com
[00:02:25] Jeff, you love telling stories. You used to make documentaries, and you've worked on many media products as well. How do you apply storytelling to your work and product and user experience when it's going really well?
[00:02:37] Jeff Birkeland: I would. Almost go so far as to say you could be thinking about the experience that a member is gonna get as a movie.
[00:02:48] That's playing out for them. You know, if you're envisioning the beginning of a story and then the middle and then the end, and sort of what is taking the viewer of that kind of story in a film, let's say environment? Yeah. Well, if you. Overlay that onto a product experience that's about a cohesive user experience that goes end to end.
[00:03:13] And you understand, yeah, how somebody got from, uh, the screen prior to the screen that we're looking at in a product review. It's like, well, how did the user even get here? And what was their mindset and thought process as they land? Where do we want them to go? Where do they need to go? Where do they want to go?
[00:03:32] And it creates that continuum of the experience in a way that you might otherwise be a little bit isolated in your
[00:03:39] Dan Blumberg: thinking. How did that manifest at Headspace where there really is this feeling of, you know, transformation while you're doing the meditation. But there's also, as you just mentioned, all the things that happened just prior and just after.
[00:03:50] And that's the full product experience. It's not just the, the, the several minutes that someone is, you know, helping you breathe and you know, et cetera. Whether it's mental
[00:03:59] Jeff Birkeland: health or healthcare, so much of the benefit of what's occurring happens. Once you're not actually in the app anymore, you've put your phone down, now what are you doing?
[00:04:11] Yeah. And how do you create an experience that leads to something that somebody's gonna do afterwards? Um, how do you artfully and kindly offer reminders and opportunities and connect the dots? That was a real challenge. At Headspace, you might meditate, but. You coming back and doing it again and then again and then again, and even, uh, and this would come out in a Headspace context.
[00:04:40] In the actual audio, you'd have Andy's voice telling you to do something in between, and that's just example of how important that in between times, that's actually a phrase that we sometimes use. It's like, what are we doing in the in-between times. Like what, you know what I mean? Mm-Hmm. How do we create an experience that even creates, uh, the justification and the motivation to do something in the, in-between times?
[00:05:02] And that definitely applies, uh, more broadly than just mental health into healthcare. This is a fundamental problem with healthcare delivery. Beyond access, getting answers and advocacy is also just. Engaging with the thing, uh, and doing what it is that will actually help you improve. And so I think there's some personalizations that we can think about applying in the healthcare space that can be very helpful.
[00:05:29] Dan Blumberg: Yeah. Well, you're making me think of sort of all the, there's so much focus in. American healthcare on like fixing problems and probably not enough focus on preventing them. And that's a huge opportunity to not have you in the emergency room in the first place.
[00:05:44] Jeff Birkeland: Totally. And I've had, I had this experience myself personally, which speaks to the integration, is the innovation in an included health context.
[00:05:55] So that multidisciplinary form of care and delivering that all from a really simple experience is so key. So I spent some time, unfortunately this is about a year and change ago, uh, in the hospital, and I had to have a procedure where I was dealing with. An excellent surgeon and I had some diet questions about how what I would be eating would make a difference in terms of preventing what we were solving for.
[00:06:26] And I wanna emphasize a really top tier surgeon who, you know, did the procedure and like my problem was solved, which is totally fair. I think our challenge at a place like Included health is how do we make those connections? If you can envision a scenario where using an app plus phone where you're real time conversation with a doctor leads to somebody reaching out immediately and you're sort of like connecting the dots and tying it all together in that multidisciplinary way that's improved care that I think most people don't get that kind of care, and that's what our mission is about.
[00:07:05] Dan Blumberg: Yeah, and it's actually kind of a hard thing in some ways to measure, right? 'cause you almost have to measure a negative, like people that did not need surgery. That's the thing.
[00:07:14] Jeff Birkeland: You know what I mean? Really great outcomes delivered with costs coming down. That is a function that we certainly think through.
[00:07:24] How do we get somebody to the absolute right doctor for this case? Who has a track record as an example of a data point that an algorithm at Included Health would evaluate is like who is creating that opportunity for the member to have a really great experience as opposed to let's just find somebody, a doctor.
[00:07:45] Like just a directory of doctors is not the service. What's the best doctor for you, Dan? Your personal case, your location, who you are, yeah, uh, et cetera is what we're after.
[00:08:01] Dan Blumberg: After working in media for so many years, and including at many media platforms, Facebook, LinkedIn, where you and I met Yahoo long before that, what was it that drew you to to the healthcare space? My
[00:08:12] Jeff Birkeland: toe into the water in terms of working in healthcare was the opportunity to lead the consumer product organization at Headspace.
[00:08:23] And I did that a hundred percent as a mission oriented, uh, career choice. Headspace, uh, was an app that I had used. I actually learned about it in the context of working at LinkedIn. Uh, Jeff at the time was an investor and he invited the founder of Headspace to the company and did kinda one of those fireside chats where they talked about meditation and Headspace.
[00:08:45] And many people at that event immediately went and tried the app and. I did the same. And I'll be honest with you, my initial intention was, this is gonna help me at work. Mm-Hmm. I'm going to think more clearly. I'm going to be more creative, I'm gonna be more focused. All of the things that I had heard in this fireside chat I wanted for myself.
[00:09:08] But what I did find, Dan, was it ended up improving relationships, family dynamics. I just became a more. Patient, uh, thoughtful person. The biggest impact that it ended up having on me was. Being able to view myself almost as an outside observer. So all of this was benefits and when I had had the opportunity then to get into a conversation with the Headspace team, it was just a dream really to get an opportunity to work on something that had been that meaningful.
[00:09:38] I. And so I spent a couple of years helping rebuild the app. The team, uh, at that time, uh, Headspace had merged with Ginger. Uh, ginger provided coaching and therapy, and the vision was to pull those two together into a comprehensive mental health service. I think the opportunity at Included health, and one of my learnings from working at Headspace is that.
[00:10:01] You know, health and healthcare is integrated. You know, so many things that might be a mental health, uh, scenario are actually much broader. And so the real opportunity to change health and healthcare, I think is I. It's all connected. We use the phrase, the integration itself is the innovation. So you get one place to go and it's all there.
[00:10:27] And so that's been really part of the opportunity to join Included, um, and dig into healthcare from that root cause, a deeper point of view with all of those services accessible. But it really comes from the beginnings of getting involved in the mental health space.
[00:10:44] Dan Blumberg: Yeah, and I mean, you've moved from, you know, media platforms to Headspace, which you could argue is, is a media company in, in many ways to now you're, you're working at Included Health with has Doctors and Care.
[00:10:54] And I, I'd love if you could share more, a bit, a bit about what included Health does for those that don't know, and also some of the things that you've learned now that you're working in the truly, fully, highly regulated, super complex, you know, healthcare industry, which is, uh, I imagine is a little different than, than some of the other places you've been.
[00:11:10] Jeff Birkeland: Completely. So the mission at Included Health is to improve healthcare for everyone. A very big, bold, broad vision. That itself speaks to the decomplexify that we have work to do to take healthcare. That actually doesn't work. I. That well for everyone on a day-to-day basis. And actually if you take a step back, healthcare in the United States, I would argue works incredibly well if you're set up perfectly and you're getting the services exactly as one would expect.
[00:11:41] The innovation around healthcare in the United States is fantastic, but it's not everyone that gets that access. Those answers and then that advocacy that would happen. And that's what included health is. It's a personalized, all in one healthcare service and solution where you show up in an experience and we do everything across the board from navigation and questions and getting you answers to how your healthcare should work, could work, benefits, claims, insurance.
[00:12:16] Fragmentation, all of that. Think about that as almost a white glove concierge service. And then we do really great clinical care, which gets you access on top of those answers. And we wrap the whole thing up with advocacy. So think of it as if, um, if you've ever been involved in the healthcare system and you have somebody who's a doctor who's essentially guiding you through every aspect of the experience, kind of off to the side, I.
[00:12:45] Oftentimes in a SMS, uh, text, right? Yeah, yeah. You're just talking to your aunt who's like basically guiding you through the experience. And so 30% of the Fortune 100 use some form of the service, and so on a given day, we are serving tens of millions of folks who are getting the benefit of the services that we provide.
[00:13:07] So that's what included health is. I would say the biggest learning is how to create that simplicity in the face of the complexity and even the services that we provide that I just walked through pretty broad set of services. How do you create an experience and this is what we're spending so much time thinking through.
[00:13:28] That actually feels even simpler than that from the standpoint of a member. So you hold up a phone. And you can envision different parts of life that have been totally transformed with really great. Technology and innovation married to a fantastic user experience. So you might say, you know, you and I don't take a taxi very often anymore.
[00:13:52] Mm-Hmm. That's been reinvented by Uber, you might say, shopping. Very rare am I going to the grocery store or a convenience store. Instead I'm using Amazon. And so if you go app by app or icon by icon, these different. Portions of life have been reinvented in that way. Yeah. And then you get to the healthcare aspect of life, which is a fundamental and super impactful to you and your family, but is incredibly complex and has not reached that status yet.
[00:14:22] Where, you know, on the phone, if you think of that icon, that's the first place that you think of to go to solve that problem. That's what included health is increasingly doing.
[00:14:34] Dan Blumberg: I know a lot of your work is on personalization. I'd love if you could share a little more detail on some of the personalized experiences that you're building for, for patients or for providers.
[00:14:43] Jeff Birkeland: So personalization for us is how does the app experience change and how does our overall service evolve to reflect the fact that we know who you are and you've been dealing with us, uh, for a period of time. Think about the typical offline healthcare experience. I'll give you one example, which is you might have an appointment at an offline doctor.
[00:15:07] You're gonna go online, fill out a quick form that's basically an intake, and answer some questions, and you hit submit. And then you go to the office and they hand you a clipboard, uh, and you basically do it again, right? And then you make, work your way into an office, sort of behind the lobby. You might get a.
[00:15:24] Now a third time where you're getting that clipboard, obviously when you come back in two weeks, you're gonna get a clipboard again. So we've just walked through 3, 4, 5 different clipboards. Personalization in a healthcare context for us is you might tell us something once and now we know who you are.
[00:15:41] And we also know, because we sit at the nexus of all this healthcare data that's coming in about a member claims data is an example of that. What the member, uh, him or herself is telling us. And all of that creates this really rich profile of what a different member, you know, you're gonna have different needs versus myself.
[00:16:02] And so you shouldn't be getting the same app experience and you shouldn't be repeating yourself. So those are kind of the basics of that. And I would say we're at the early days of where that'll ultimately end up going. Particularly when you consider. Broader uses of ai, uh, yeah. Which we're definitely experimenting with and excited about.
[00:16:20] And so if you're increasingly having essentially conversations digitally, uh, where we're helping to solve problems for you, that's just. Making the data richer, that we're understanding more and more about you in a way that's recorded that can allow us to increasingly personalize the broader experience over time We talk about longitudinal care.
[00:16:43] How is that experience extending beyond being transactional in the moment? Um, and turning into a relationship that you're forming not just with your doctor, but with your broader care team and ultimately with the entire service, so that it always feels like that neighborhood experience that for those that have access to something like that, that's really tremendous.
[00:17:06] Dan Blumberg: Can you take us even deeper inside the product development process? So
[00:17:11] Jeff Birkeland: we're really excited about the use of AI technology in the space. I'll give you an example of an effort that is we are testing and learning and then preparing to rapidly expand. So data science team and kind of a small group experimenting with taking data that we have.
[00:17:31] About coverage and using that as training data and then allowing you to ask coverage related questions in that context against an LLM that's been trained on that data and in our context on a client by client, person by person basis pending who you are and. Where your benefits are coming from, whether that's a, you know, this health plan or this employer.
[00:17:57] The root documents and coverage are slightly different. And typically that would be an experience where, you know, if you're calling us, this was a healthcare learning for me, Dan is, yeah. You know, how many questions come in where somebody's basically just wanting to better understand their coverage. It speaks to how confusing.
[00:18:16] Oh God, yes. Healthcare itself can be, it sounds like you've asked this question. Well, if you deal with a person, a live person, who you would call at included health, or you're speaking to us in a chat context, but the other end of the line is a human, um, wait, I don't
[00:18:32] Dan Blumberg: have to fax you.
[00:18:33] Jeff Birkeland: You, you know, this is exactly what, right?
[00:18:36] And so in that context, imagine a conversation where you're asking a coverage question. Somebody on the other end is actually looking through documents and then helping you solve that coverage question. Now enter that with an LLM trained on that data. And so we've experimented with that and rolled that out to a client or two, and the results are super encouraging where we're getting into the business of expanding what that.
[00:19:01] We call it coverage checker. What kinds of topics and areas can we expand into beyond pure coverage? So you might talk about a claims question, or you're searching for a really good doctor, initial testing on this coverage checker. Yeah. Question. And we've rolled it out to a client or two and we're getting tons of learnings.
[00:19:22] And what we're finding is that there's a real opportunity to expand what that. Checker checks and a couple of important things to talk about here. 'cause we've spent a lot of time about, well, what's the persona and the tone and usage that the experience is going to use and. What's the experience feel like from a member?
[00:19:45] What's the super smooth handoff to a human? And so just tons of rich learning Yeah. And opportunity there that, yeah, really, Dan came from an initial test and honestly some kind of prototyping into, let's put it in front of members, let's do some user research, but then get it in front of a client, uh, or the members that are associated with that client, and then learning from there.
[00:20:10] So we're very excited about what we're seeing.
[00:20:12] Dan Blumberg: Cool. Share more about how you're evaluating the, the product that's in market with a couple of clients. And because this is a, this is a key question for lots of builders out there as they're testing, you know, new products that have AI at their core and, you know, scaling them to production is, there's a lot of factors that that, that go into that.
[00:20:29] Jeff Birkeland: Yeah. The good news is that we have a fantastic care team. That answers these questions like this today. And so we have some really clear baseline metrics and so we are able to compare how an LLM would fare against what we believe is an excellent care team. One of the things that we've found and we're starting to dive into more and more is, you know, when you do this.
[00:21:00] And the result is working, particularly when you add the element of speed, which we've definitely seen. So we're finding that that causes members to ask more questions, uh, and different types of questions, you know, when you deliver. Yeah. Amazing service with lightning speed. This is the old Google, uh, learnings, like as speed goes and you get what you're looking for, you're gonna do that more and more.
[00:21:27] The last piece, Dan, that is important is how often are we able to solve the problem without the need to? Create that smooth flow and escalation to, uh, human care team member who would help solve the problem for particularly complicated questions. So we call that containment. So it's a quality of experience overall.
[00:21:48] What's the member's reaction, speed, correctness, feedback loop, et cetera, compared to that baseline. At the end of the day, now we're freeing up time for somebody to dig into your case. Uh, let's say that might have a good deal of complexity and then that's just all goodness. You're creating value, uh, for more complicated cases because you're handling speedy cases quite simply.
[00:22:14] Dan Blumberg: Yeah. Right on. Jeff, thank you so much.
Jeff Birkeland: Thank you.
That's Jeff Birkeland. I'm Dan Blumberg, and this is CRAFTED.
CRAFTED. is brought to you in partnership with Docker, which helps developers build, share, run, and verify applications anywhere without environment confirmation or management. More than 20 million developers worldwide use Docker's suite of development tools, services, and automations to accelerate the delivery of secure applications. Learn more at Docker.com.
Special thanks to Artium, where I launched Crafted to see how Artium can help you build your future at Artium.ai.
And CRAFTED. is produced by Modern Product Minds, where my team and I can help you take a new product from zero to one and beyond. We specialize in early stage product discovery, growth, and experimentation. Learn more and sign up for the CRAFTED. Newsletter at modernproductminds.com
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[00:23:15] Jeff Birkeland: Hey, the dietician stuff is not my thing.