MindMeld is adding artificial intelligence-powered voice capabilities to Sense.ly’s “virtual nurse” application that provides proven, personalized patient monitoring and follow-up care. The two companies are hoping to create customized virtual assistant applications for the healthcare industry.

“We created Sense.ly to put an intelligent virtual nurse in the palm of every patient’s hand to make healthcare easy and accessible,” said Adam Odessky, Chief Executive Officer of Sense.ly. “By complementing physician expertise with advanced machine learning, MindMeld is helping us enable healthcare providers to deliver better care at lower costs.”

The AI-powered solutions could be beneficial for managing chronic condition patient populations, reducing unnecessary hospitalizations and reducing cost along the way. This is done by mobile-enabled medical monitoring, alerting, and consultation with patients.

MindMeld’s platform helps healthcare providers deliver around-the-clock access to medical expertise, and combined with Sense.ly, the system can automate many of the most common patient services normally delivered by clinicians.

The AI-powered solutions could be beneficial for managing chronic condition patient populations.Using Sense.ly’s smartphone application, a patient can interact with a nurse avatar using simple voice commands and ask a wide range of health-related questions. MindMeld’s AI technology is used to understand the meaning of the spoken questions and provide answers or relevant medical information. If necessary, the application can connect the patient to a nurse or a doctor via a video visit. And since many common requests can be addressed without requiring a doctor or nurse consultation, this technology promises to reduce costs while maintaining a high quality of care.

For instance, a patient using Sense.ly will be able to ask questions such as, “I have ringing in my ears and am feeling dizzy and nauseous. What should I do?” MindMeld will then understand the meaning of the question, and provide detailed information about possible conditions and where to turn to for help.

“With the recent advances in AI and machine learning, a new generation of tools is emerging that can interpret and answer many spoken requests which formerly could only be answered by skilled medical practitioners, “said Tim Tuttle, CEO and founder of Expect Labs, the company behind MindMeld.