Submitted
Health in Fragile Contexts Challenge

Vocadian

Team Leader
Yujie Wang
Solution Overview & Team Lead Details
Our Organization
Vocadian
What is the name of your solution?
Vocadian
Provide a one-line summary of your solution.
Healthcare burnout is highly prevalent but often left unaddressed, damaging health worker wellness and causing poor performance and staff turnover. Vocadian is a clinically validated voice AI that combats healthcare burnout through individual behavioral interventions and organizational optimization.
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?

Workforce fatigue and burnout are highly prevalent but often underdiagnosed and untreated. In the healthcare sector, it led to two substantial consequences — poor performance or service delivery and long-term staff turnover.

First, burnout is estimated to have led to a yearly $6B in value due to poor service delivery or medical errors. It occurs across all specialty verticals. In the specialties where labor shortage is more prevalent, patient satisfaction rates are even lower.

Second, it is estimated that such long hours have led to dissatisfaction among the Healthcare. Care teams are under tremendous strain — with burnout, turnover, and labor shortages at record levels. The high cost of turnover and growing reliance on contract labor are sending labor expenses soaring and operating margins plummeting. Simply put, employees are at their breaking point, which could have a long-term impact on patient access and care quality. Moreover, burnout can put the sustainability of the healthcare profession at risk. A survey indicates 1 in 10 medical residents considered dropping out due to fatigue. Yet, training a medical resident in the U.S. costs $1.3M.

A challenge behind the issue is an ineffective scheduling mechanism that failed to audit cognitive performance and readiness for high stake tasks. Where existing solutions exist, they require a high threshold for adoption.

At Vocadian, we see Holistic Health as the heart of all organizations, and an opportunity to improve HSE and productivity management simultaneously, subsequently promoting a healthier working culture and society for future generations to come.

What is your solution?

We have developed a clinically validated voice biomarker that can provide instantaneous assessment and long-term prediction of one’s fatigue and fit-for-duty. On top of assessment, Vocadian also offers behavioral intervention measures to alleviate burnout symptoms based on latest research in circadian science. For front-line HCPs, our solutions are two-folds. At individual level, Vocadian acts as a personalized schedule assistant, offering suggestions on when to perform task and when to take a rest based on individual target assignments and circadian rhythm. Individual can also leverage the behavioral intervention features (i.e., light exposure, power nap schedule, sleep hygiene, mealtime adjustment, caffeine intake) to actively manage burnout symptoms. At organizational level, Vocadian is a SaaS platform that can manage complex workforce with aggregated HCP fatigue assessment data to replace the current generic and disconnected system to combat inefficient workflows and communication bottlenecks that can frustrate providers, delay patient access, and compromise care.

Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?

Vocadian serves physicians and nurses, especially the ones most susceptible to burnout (i.e., emergency room HCPs, night shift nurses) to make an impact on their operational performance and individual wellness. Patients will also be positively impacted by Vocadian as a more effective healthcare operation system will improve patient access to care and reach better quality of care.

How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?

Vocadian is built on 3 key factors: high technology barrier with proprietary scientific findings, leading-industry connections to expand the business, and scalability due to the low-cost and non-invasive voice-powered software.

We have identified long-lasting pain points in high-stake industries without effective solutions. Our novel AI technology enabled us to provide first-of-its-kind treatment and segment-specific solutions to transform workforce fatigue. This is an open market with substantial profits. Vocadian breaks in the workplace safety regime with protected solutions and diverse industry connections to scale up.


Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?
  • Increase local capacity and resilience in health systems, including the health workforce, supply chains, and primary care services
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Boston
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
  • United States
What is your solution’s stage of development?
  • Pilot: An organization testing a product, service, or business model with a small number of users
How many people does your solution currently serve?

In parallel to healthcare sector, we are also applying Vocadian’s technology in other safety-sensitive industry sectors, including transportation & logistics, and mining, oil & gas. In the past three months, Vocadian has established strategic pilot partnership with one of the largest miners and a global top three container shipper. In total, the user group has reached over 2,000 employees. These pilot studies will enable to further validate the effectiveness and convenience of Vocadian technology in real-world work settings, and help us gauge the economic benefit Vocadian can bring. With more accumulated in-the-wild data, Vocadian is expecting to form more alliance in the the healthcare sector. 

Why are you applying to Solve?

To enable the paradigm shift in health worker health management, Vocadian will conduct a vast scale of in-the-wild testing. We see Solve as a mediator/anchor for us to connect with potential high-impact clients, accelerate our pace in implementation, and strengthen our proposition as we collect more feedback from such pilots, with mentorship from industry experts available from SOLVE.

Monetarily, funds from SOLVE will also be pivotal for Vocadian in supporting the second batch of clinical trials, which will allow us to pack in new features with the pilot programs and open up new business opportunities for Vocadian, such as Employee emotion monitoring and personalized mental health intervention, Vocadian to establish first-mover traction in the market.

In which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?
  • Business Model (e.g. product-market fit, strategy & development)
  • Financial (e.g. accounting practices, pitching to investors)
  • Legal or Regulatory Matters
  • Product / Service Distribution (e.g. delivery, logistics, expanding client base)
Who is the Team Lead for your solution?
Yujie Wang
More About Your Solution
Your Team
Your Business Model & Funding
Solution Team:
Yujie Wang
Yujie Wang
Co-Founder and CEO
Xinyu (Crystal) Ma
Xinyu (Crystal) Ma
Vocadian Chief Commercial Officer, MS in Epidemiology at Harvard
Kailin Xu
Kailin Xu
M.S. in epidemiology
Adolphus Lau
Adolphus Lau
Chief Strategy Officer