On episode 13 of Steve Mazefsky’s podcast, ‘Claims, Planes, & Automobiles’, Steve sat down with DeepDoc’s CEO, Rob Cleary, to discuss his work history, how DeepDoc began, the benefits they provide, and what sets them apart from other document management software in the property-casualty industry. In this highly competitive world, Rob explains why DeepDoc is at the top of the game when it comes to medical record management.

DeepDoc Origins

As the podcast begins, Steve asks Rob about his personal life and how he ended up in the risk mitigation and B2C industry. Rob explains his love for family time and his passion for golf, then dives into how he started his career in business consulting. The majority of his work was consulting with large organizations on IT-related projects and system implementations. When he decided to work with smaller businesses, he found his way to the IME space, implementing the skills he learned to help them grow with IMEs.

“I just couldn’t believe the number of claims that existed in the P&C space and the number of IMEs and reviews that were done, and it was really eye-opening to the whole industry.”

“It was really interesting to learn about [IMEs], and then once I started to dig into it, and you see just such huge opportunities which you see now in the industry with all of the acquisitions and all of the consolidations, private equities are very aggressive in this space because they see the opportunity. They see manual processes, a lot of manual processes, companies not leveraging technology the way that they could to become more efficient, and when private equity sees that they jump in because they know they could create a lot of value by jumping in and doing the consolidations and implementing psychology, some of the things that they do best.”

When DeepDoc was invented, there was little technology available to organize these types of documents, which is the largest expense for many of these companies. Realizing where the opportunity was and talking to people about AI technology led to Rob’s desire to leverage AI for the organization of medical records. He believes people take AI for granted now, which is great because it’s amazing technology.

The Benefits of Sorting Large Document Files with AI

Completing an IME is a tedious process of collecting the records and requires complex management, including receiving the documents and organizing them efficiently. When ballparking the human hours to prepare these documents it varies, but generally speaking, Rob claimed humans might be able to organize 2K pages per day manually, with a total of only two case completions per day.

“Before people started going offshore and finding low-cost labor countries through the BPOs to do it, you couldn’t do it. You wanted to help the doctor or the reviewer with the records but if you’re paying someone 40-50 thousand dollars a year, it’s very expensive to have them spend their entire day just organizing one or two or three cases for you. It becomes cost-prohibited to be able to do that. The onus is placed on the doctors which is an even more expensive option… who’s gonna put in the effort to get this right and do it.”

When Steve asks Rob what the specific industry problem DeepDoc solves, it’s simple: The organization and summarization of medical records. DeepDoc solves the problem of time and expense.

“Everyone wants our product; everyone needs our product. There’s no question about it, that viewing a thousand-page PDF document that’s organized and summarized is exponentially faster and easier than not having it done that way.”

“Being able to do it at scale with speed and accuracy, and using technology to do that is really what’s come to the industry and what’s new right now.”

How Does DeepDoc fit into AAICO?

Applied AI Company (AAICO) is the parent company of DeepDoc. The idea was that Rob believed AI would be a huge asset for businesses moving forward. However, just because AI exists doesn’t necessarily mean it can solve business problems alone. AAICO was created to do two things: look at regulated industries like healthcare and merge that with AI to create products and solutions to business problems. As Rob says, anyone can use ChatGPT, and it is beneficial to individuals who write articles or create press releases. Beyond that, the technology needs to be leveraged further to be a great asset for businesses as a whole. AAICO was formed to take business problems and leverage AI in a more sophisticated manner. DeepDoc is the first product launched by AAICO, and its focus is the property-casualty space to organize and summarize medical records.

“When we say organize, we talk about putting documents in the right sections and organizing things chronologically. When we talk about summarization, we’re talking about narrative summary so that same one-thousand-page sample may turn into a 5- or 6-page narrative summary. So, the claims adjuster, the attorney, the IME physician, the peer reviewer, the in-house council, whoever that may be, will have access to those assets so they will have a PDF document which will be the records organized, and they will have a word document which will be the narrative summary of that.”

Who is DeepDoc’s Target Market?

DeepDoc covers a diverse group of IME companies, peer review companies, in-house and outside counsel, and direct to the carrier.

“For example, an auto-demand package comes in, so there's an auto claim, and there's a demand that comes in from the plaintiff, and they get all these records with the demand. Having the claims adjuster have access to the records all organized chronologically in a PDF document that’s easy to navigate, click where you need to go, find the documents you're looking for, searching the documents, look for keywords, then have that summary, allows them to make better decisions.”

In Rob’s opinion, AI will not take people’s jobs from them, but rather, everyone will use AI to make their jobs easier so they can focus on the more important tasks of their role. He believes DeepDoc takes the administrative burden away from the people who ultimately need to make important decisions around the case.

“The same thing happens with in-house counsel. You don’t want claims adjusters, attorneys, [or] paralegals organizing medical records. You want them doing claims adjuster things like trying to figure out how to best mitigate risk and manage this claim. Same thing on the attorney side, you want them to be able to make determinations as to how are we going to move forward with this case, are we going to settle, are we gonna push back.”

DeepDoc’s primary focus is on compensation, auto, disability, general liability, and other traditional claims. They also recently began working with long-term care claims. Their desire to assist third-party administrators (TPAs) is important in their work as well. When a TPA takes over for an employer, they may receive cases or claims from the previous TPA. In talking to them, Rob discovered TPAs receive a data doc and all the PDF documents through the transition, but there's an assessment they need to make on all these claims: What are they going to do with the claims? What are their next steps? Some claims may be at different phases of the processes and need to be managed. Clients say they would love to use DeepDoc to help understand where each of these cases is in their process. This leads to adjusters spending less time figuring that out and making better decisions on managing the claim. After all, time is money.

How Does DeepDoc Expedite the Claims Process?

Rob explains that DeepDoc conveniently supports PDFs and Word Documents through their online portal where clients can import their medical records with ease. The concept of DeepDoc is newer to the space, so Steve asks what the situation is when they begin a dialogue with new prospects in terms of what they’re currently doing with their document issues. Rob explains they typically fall into one of three categories: one is they're doing nothing. They're the ones kicking it down the line, so they’re not touching it - they're sending the documents to whoever they're sending it to next like the IME company. If they are doing something, it’s either in-house with team members where they have a records department that focuses on that, or they use an outsourced vendor such as a low-cost labor BPO, traditionally located in low-cost labor countries, to do the work.

BPO, or Business Process Outsourcing, is most easily described by picking up the phone and calling a 1-800 customer service number at any corporation where you'll most likely get someone offshore assisting you. Every major insurance company uses a BPO for policy signups, data entry, medical coding and billing, and more.

What are DeepDoc’s Differentiators Relative to Competition?

Over time, DeepDoc will change and evolve. Rob explains that some of the more immediate benefits or differences are speed, cost, and accuracy. It drives down costs and increases efficiency. Long-term, DeepDoc is asking what else they can do in the space to help the person reviewing these documents beyond just creating a summary.

“That’s what’s really exciting about this space; it's new, and we're all trying to figure out where it's going next and how we can add more value to the process.

Steve asks Rob to explain how easy it is to start utilizing DeepDoc. He explains that one of the most interesting concepts is when you go to another website to buy a product, you have to schedule a demo. They rarely allow you to sign up because so much of the work is manual. For large enterprise clients, it makes sense, but for physicians doing IMEs, they’re doing 10-20 evaluations a month, so it’s easier for them to simply sign up, log in, and start uploading records and organizing documents without an extensive demo. On top of that, the first 10K pages per month with DeepDoc are free. There are absolutely zero barriers to getting started and beginning to use DeepDoc’s product.

Steve claims that’s one of the bigger benefits of DeepDoc - the ease of utilization. DeepDoc is confident enough in its ability to resolve problems that they’re willing to give away a significant amount of pages knowing once somebody engages they will figure out several different problems DeepDoc can solve.

“We spend a lot of time and energy building a self-sign-up platform. There are large players in this space and through consolidations there are fewer small and mid-size players but the smaller companies do exist. The best way to serve them is to let them use it and interact with it on their own. Having a demo creates friction in the process because they have to fit each other's schedule, and all that does is create friction in the sales process and less likelihood they’ll buy and follow through. The easier you make it, ultimately will lead to more conversions to people in the pipeline.”

The podcast comes to an end with Steve announcing his appreciation for Rob’s time and energy and asking if he has any additional thoughts. Rob ends the interview with the perfect quote:

“This has been exciting. I enjoy working with technology to solve business problems. If I were to summarize my career, that’s what I do and enjoy doing. Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”