A doctor should first and foremost treat and attend to patients. However, in the technological age, when it is possible to dial a number at any time and get in touch with a doctor's office, he or she often becomes more of a telephone operator, at best leaving this role to the nurse, who also has plenty of professional work to do. If there is a health problem, the specialist still has to see the patient, examine him and consult him. However, he does not have enough time to do this if he is on the phone for a good part of the day.

Fortunately, it is again technology that can help break this vicious circle. "Voice of Emmy", a robotic telephone operator that asks the patient about his problem and passes it on to the doctor in the form of a request to the Emma system, is now launching in Slovakia. Compared to an answering machine, it saves time, is as friendly as possible to patients and can be configured by the practice according to its needs.

The robot's strength is its ability to carry on a conversation with a patient almost as if it were talking to a live person. This way, patients don't have to make complicated choices from the switchboard dude, they simply answer the questions the voice assistant asks them. In Slovakia, of course, they speak Slovak, so there is no language barrier. And if you have a patient in your records with the correct phone number, the entire call with Voice of Emma can take up to one minute.

The voice can also sort requests by urgency, so you can choose which ones to attend to immediately and which ones to wait until the time is right to deal with them. Patients will also appreciate that they don't have to wait for the surgery line to be free - Emmy's voice handles calls in parallel so it's never busy. The time when patients call Voice of Emma is determined by each doctor according to their needs (e.g. during the time reserved for acute patients).

How Emmy's Voice helps Dr. Young

"After the first month of operation, Voice of Emma handled an average of 46 incoming calls per day. Only 5 patients said it was an urgent call and the voice assistant connected them directly to a nurse. So, Voice of Emmy handled 41 non-urgent calls per day that would otherwise have had to be handled by a nurse. This gives her time to do her professional work."

Adrian Young, MD,
general practitioner in Prague

How Emmy's Voice helps at MUDr. Schwarz

"I hear from the nurses and doctors who come to our practice that they have never experienced such silence at the doctor's office. Emmy's Voice only transfers 1-2 acute calls to us per day, and the rest of the requests are transcribed into a decourse.

Based onthe transcription, I then call patients back and provide them with a distant consultation. If you do 10 such consultations a day for 165 CZK, you'll earn 33,000 CZK a month. So the Voice of Emma earns its keep, plus it greatly relieves nurses who would otherwise have to answer the phones."

Rodion Schwarz, MD,
general practitioner in Velké Přílepy

Will Emmy help you too?

If you missed the webinar live, watch it on the recording. In it, Dr. Sobotka discusses each point in more depth, including practical examples. You'll see what Emmy looks like in the interface for both doctors and patients. This will give you a much better idea of her.

Email us at podpora@sestraemmy.cz and we'll send you a recording of the webinar.

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