Alright. Good afternoon, everyone. Sorry for the delay.I'm Tapika Katke, and I'm really, really, honored at to be at the conference to share a topic that's very close to my heart, that we've built technology that not only works, but that heals. My talk today is called the code that cares because, in health care, of course, functionality isn't, just enough. But we build, that what we build must be secure, intelligent, and above all, empathetic. I've spent the last few years designing and scaling telehealth platforms and, remote care, and I've learned something very important that healing, doesn't begin with hospital wizard, but it starts with design of our systems. Further down the session, we'll we'll explore how, code we, that we've written with care can truly change lives. Alright. So next. Let me start with a question.

Like, what if the code could do more than just pass tests or power APIs? What do you guys think? What if it actually cared? And when I say care, like, I remember one project that I worked on. It was a postoperative care app for patients recovering from, page major surgeries. And then we added a simple feature, that asked the patients, that did a morning check that asked, how are you feeling today? So this is nothing clinical, of course. Just a human touch. Within a week, we saw a 30% increase in patient engagement, And it was just a reminder that sometimes a line of code can feel like, a hand on some shoulder. You know, code has that power to connect.

We feel like it's you know, that's not very relevant enough, but it does have the power to connect and to reassure and to care. So, and, nowadays, like, everything is remote. Right? And it's it's the new normal version. It doesn't really mean it's impersonal. It's we're in the middle of one of the most profound shifts, I would say, in the health care history. Care is no longer bound by physical spaces. Patients are wearing sensors, mobile apps, using mobile apps, joining videos with doctors over the app. And then during the height of high height of COVID pandemic, we launched a platform for patients' remote symptoms and vitals from home. One elderly patient, wrote us, like, I feel like someone is watching over me, even though I'm alone.

And that single sentence changed the way I approached, this whole industry, the the things that I work for, and even the system design. Remote care doesn't have to feel remote if done right. It can feel more, human than ever. And then, here, of course, when here's the truth. Right? Like, the technology doesn't really heal people. Like, I guess everybody will agree, no matter what AI you will bring, blah blah blah. I think people do really matter in this in this industry. And so in one deployment, we had a vitals monitoring dashboard that produced over a 100 alerts a day. It was technical technically perfect, of course, because it was accurately spitting out all those alerts. But then clinicians were ignoring, we noticed. And why? Because it overwhelmed them. So we went back. We worked the designs, added tiered, alerting systems, including patients with photos and summaries, of their, brief health care summary. Sorry.

And then then suddenly clinicians started responding, which was a great feedback from them. And, because now it wasn't just data. Right? It was a person. When we design with empathy, we make field data human again. So now, let's dive into remote patient monitoring systems. And I would say most, most successful systems rely on three pillars. Forces data ingestion, and then intelligence layer and the human in the loop. I build this framework during, maternity RPM project. I remember, we hadn't expect expecting other logging vitals daily from rural areas, and and our data ingestion layer pulled in blood pressures, but pressure vitals first. On the vitals including weight, heart rate, and then intelligence layer. What it does is flags anomalies based on personalized baselines.

But what really made it powerful was the follow ups, which is the human in the loop. Right? And that one phone call after alert prevented an preeclampsia, case from turning into a critical one. The architecture wasn't the tech. It was a safety net, right, after a while. So moving on more deep into the data ingestion layer, it almost starts with data. It's everywhere. When, we collect real time alerts, vitals, along with alerts and, where, devices like variable, ECGs and then blood pressure cuffs and pulse oximeters. In one project, we discovered an IOD sensor that was duplicating data packets, patient dashboard, short erratic BP spikes. And after digging in, we found a bug and added, deduplication layer, and then, the data normalized.

That incident reminded me that precision in data pipelines is not just technical, it's clinical. So these systems are super fragile. And then precision in this not just this, I would say, like, in every industry matters. We use standards like, h o seven, FHIR, so data can move safely and be used by multiple teams. And security is nonnegotiable. Everything is encrypted at rest and in transit. In health care, even a second's delay or one wrong reading can change outcomes. Right? So next, intelligence layer. Now once the data is in, what do we do with it? This is intelligence layer where, I led the team that build a fluid retention, alert system for heart failure patients. Initially, our model was too sensitive.

It flagged too many patients. Clinicians were overwhelmed. We added clinicians' feedback loops. Sorry. You read in models and added alert throttling, and the results, of course, of fewer false positives, more timely, interventions by the clinicians, even when, from the patient's side. And we also implemented event driven architectures to ensure alerts were triggered only when thresholds were met consistently, not just the spikes. So this help balance urgency with the appropriate actions. And then, I would say predictive, intelligence should not only support it should only support actually, but not stress health care workers. Alright. So, people behind the platform. Right? That's the human in the loop, the last but not the least, the most important one. This is the whole the whole and soul of the system.

I believe healing needs humans in every aspect. In one project, clinicians told us, don't just give another screen of numbers. Right? Just I mean, we already have hundreds of screens. Give us what matters. So we redesigned the dashboard to highlight only the critical trends, with color coding, within, plus the patient context, like, patient, previous hospitalization and medication changes. And for patients, we use simple language. One better tester told us this app talks to me, like an actual nurse. So that was really cool. And then and not just because it's not wasn't feeling like a robot. That's what I call bidirectional trust. It's and it's important in every app that we build, where both clinicians and patients feel heard and supported. Alright.

Now when all of this is combined, here's what it looks like when it all comes together. In our, RPM program for heart failure, patients. We paired predictive alerts with timely nurse outreach, and then what happened is, oh, no. I remember one prod one patient told us that just hearing one nurse's voice, after and learned made him feel so safe, to that he started following the care plan. And before that, it was so reluctant, of even, taking those vitals remotely. He wasn't trusting enough. But then I think as he moved over, down the course, felt more safe and secure and more heard, and then he started following the care plan. That's what, led to a twenty eight person drop in hospital readmissions, and that's just not a stat. Right? It's dozens of lives changed. And then designing so empathy. Right?

Inclusion, is engineering, designing for all, which means inclusion. And inclusion is engineering not just when we talk about our makeup foundations all the time. Like, we want this color and we wanna, feel included. We won't have all of the shades, but this also gets applied here. We had a senior who was super, intimidated by our touch screens, so we added voice prompts on, prompted onboarding. And then there was one 78 year old, told, finally, something that talks like me. Right? We'll go test our app in different languages and redesigned alerts using safe colors. Oh, sorry. Color safe palettes. After collision with red, green, color brightness missed the critical alerts. We even updated content with, you know, gender neutral languages to be more inclusive, so that everybody feels, you know, that the app is being supported off.

And that these people say, like, these are really edge cases, and they don't really consider. I've seen some in some of the areas, but I feel like these aren't really edge cases. They are, like, real users. Right? So I strongly, strongly believe that, a design that includes everyone heals more patients. Right? Alright. Next. Moving on. So I'd say two words, one wise is, when I say two words, it's, tech and health care. The navigating both, tech and health care has shown me the value of having diverse voices at the table. I've often been the one to ask, have have you thought about how this feels to the patient? Right?

Would this work for someone in a rural village, with no Internet? Because back in India, I've seen that a lot. And so I wanna get every perspective that I have seen over the years to, be considered when I'm building something. Right? And, also, how we push more culturally inclusive illustrations in our app. That's also very important. With this say, I would with this, I would say just, every time, just lead with empathy. That's our power as women. I feel like that's our superpower. And sometimes some would disagree saying that it's soft. It'll show more more of a side soft side of you. Not like a boss lady kinda thing, but I feel like it's super strategic and it's more human. And then, so what healing systems need?

Key takeaways, I would say, or bringing all of this together. Right? Precision in health care industry is of utmost importance because in health care, every decimal counts. Simplicity, because patients and clinicians are already overwhelmed in their purpose, because when mission is clearer, teams go farther, and then people are important at no, like, no exception whatsoever because at every, at the end of every heartbeat graph, is a human who wants to feel better.

Right? And then, I'll I'll leave you with this the next time, to all my lovely ladies who build, or write codes. The next time you build something, ask, does it work? But also, does care oh, sorry. Not not just in health care. I would say it does apply in every other industry because at the end, it's the end user that you wanna care about when you're writing a chord. We're building an app, because in this world when, where healing can happen out anywhere, It's up to us to build systems that listen, learn, and love. Now that's how we write code that truly cares. Right? Right. With that, I would end this session. I really, really appreciate you being here, here today and for giving me the support, and I need I hope this sparked ideas and confirmed affirmed, power as builders of the future.

I'd love to connect with each one of you. Please do reach out at LinkedIn or email. Let's build soulful systems together because code that, that cares heals. Alright. Thank you very much.