Murray Brozinsky’s relentless focus on customers, experienced leadership, and track record of delivering results have earned him recognition as an innovative entrepreneur. Murray is the CEO of Conversa Health, a pioneer in automated care management, where he leads a talented cross-functional team with compassion, curiosity, and creativity. Here are some excerpts from the interview.

What is Conversa?

Conversa is a purpose-built solution for a well-defined problem. Healthcare providers have almost no insight into how patients are doing between their visits to the doctor or hospital. Yet patients have an enormous amount of information about their health which could be captured, analyzed, and used to provide them guidance – if we only had a cost-effective way to do it. We created a technology platform to do just that. It automates outreach to patients, asks questions, collects biometric readings, analyzes the responses and data, and provides personalized education, nudges, and guidance around what the patient should do next. We’re pioneering a new care delivery model we are calling Automated Virtual Care.

Who can benefit from Automated Virtual Care?

Health systems and other healthcare organizations use Conversa’s platform to extend their relationships with patients in a virtual and automated way – 24×7. We have programs for patients living with chronic illnesses, patients discharged from the hospital, patients preparing for and recovering from procedures and surgeries, cancer patients, expectant moms, pediatric programs for kids, ED discharge programs and more. For health systems, Conversa is an automated member of their care team. For patients, Conversa is a trusted companion guiding them through their health journey.

Do you think technologies like AI and ML have improved healthcare?

There’s a lot of invention, but not enough innovation – proven solutions being used at scale to improve health and care. The report card on AI is mixed. There’s hype around AI applications that don’t live up to their promise. But there are also purpose-built solutions, incorporating AI, ML, and data analytics, which are dramatically improving experience, cost, and outcomes. The difference is the latter solutions are designed with a very well-developed understanding of the problems they’re addressing.

What are some of the challenges you see for broad adoption of healthcare technology?

The biggest challenges facing the U.S healthcare system are access & equity, quality & variability of care, and cost. The country is approaching 20% of GDP being spent on healthcare – double other advanced nations per capita – yet outcomes are middling. If I could wave a magic wand, I’d change the payment models from Fee-for-Service to Value-Based for everything in healthcare. That would align financial incentives with what everyone knows are the right things to do. If I could wave it again, I’d remove the remaining barriers to interoperability so that there would be no friction to integrating disparate systems and accessing patients’ data to use for their benefit. Those two changes would remove roadblocks to healthcare transformation and considerably accelerate and amplify the impact of health technology.

Can you share a memorable moment of success?

2020 was an all-out sprint for our company. We made an unequivocal decision to support our health system customers on the front lines in their battle with COVID-19. Whatever stress we were going through, it was worse for them. At the end of the year, I shared with the company that we had a 100% customer renewal rate, with many signing expansion agreements. That was my most memorable moment because it’s the highest praise I could possibly bestow on our team for all the blood, sweat and tears they’ve given the company.

What are your qualities as a leader?

I think my leadership qualities mirror the values of our company. We are a team of caring, data- driven, passionate, proactive problem solvers.

What’s a piece of advice you’d like to give our readers?

There’s lots of advice out there about how to overcome fear of failure. Don’t try to overcome fear of failure. I’d go so far as to say something is wrong with you if you don’t fear failure. As a leader, fearing that you might fail your customers, employees, or investors is empathetic. It’s healthy. And should motivate the hell out of you. Owning failure, learning from it, improving because of it, and not repeating it… I think those are better aspirations.