Your doctor says you should talk to someone. Then what? For most people, the next step is an insurance directory full of therapists who are not taking new patients, not taking the plan, or not picking up. Sandeep Acharya has seen the problem from the recording studio, the primary care clinic, and the patient's chair. He was a signed recording artist, led strategy at One Medical, and now runs Octave, a mental health practice built to work with insurance. Megan and Sandeep talk about why the handoff from primary care to mental health breaks, what a ghost network is, whether therapy quality can be measured, and what health systems can fix on their own.
Sandeep Acharya, Founder and CEO of Octave, Octave
Megan Antonelli, CEO, HealthIMPACT Live
00:00:00 Intro: Welcome to Digital Health talks. Each week we meet with healthcare leaders making an immeasurable difference in equity, access and quality. Hear about what tech is worth investing in and what isn't as we focus on the innovations that deliver. Join Megan Antonelli, Ginny Sharp, and Shahid Shah for a weekly no BS deep dive on what's really making an impact in healthcare.
00:00:30 Megan Antonelli: If you listen to the show, you've heard me say that in Southern California, it's easier to find a qualified psychic than it is to find a therapist. Taking new patients. I wish that were only a joke. I am Megan Antonelli, CEO of Health Impact Live, and this is Digital health Talks. My guest is my South Bay neighbor who is doing something about it. Sandy Porcaro was a signed, recording artist led strategy at One Medical and is now founder, co-founder and CEO of octave, which connects individuals, couples and families with licensed therapists who take insurance. He named the company after a musical interval, and it fits. The work is getting the right patient and the right clinician in tune and letting the best providers rise to the top. Hi Sandeep, welcome to the show.
00:01:20 Sandeep Acharya: Thank you for having me, Megan.
00:01:22 Megan Antonelli: Well, it is so fun to meet you and to have you on digital health talks. We're neighbors. You live very nearby here in, uh, the South Bay, uh, just south of Los Angeles and Manhattan Beach. So excited to, to have you here. Um, one of the things we like to talk, we like to start with is, you know, of course, we convene a lot of rooms at health impact. So we like to start with this question, which is what's the best room you've ever been in? Job. It can be a meeting, a wine room in Tuscany or, you know, some bar down at the pier. You know what's the best room you've been in?
00:02:00 Sandeep Acharya: So it's a great question. I've been in a lot of really interesting rooms. I've been backstage with Indian film stars. I've been with senators and presidents. I've been with celebrity sports, uh, athletes, um, working for a summer with one. Um, but I think the best room I've ever been in is the, it was the, was the suite in Eatontown, new Jersey at the Sheraton for our engagement after party at nine o'clock. That went till eight in the morning. Um, twenty friends and family that we love all meeting each other for the first time, my wife and I and, um, just the energy of people who really are in your corner just being together and, um, just being so excited to hang out that you're not thinking about the next moment. Um, it was that's, that was my favorite night and probably the best room I've been in.
00:02:48 Megan Antonelli: Oh, I love that, I love that. Well, I think surrounded by friends and family, obviously at a very exciting occasion. So that's I love that, which is why I love this question because we get so many different answers, which is so fun. Not all of them are in new Jersey, so.
00:03:03 Sandeep Acharya: Well, that's the that's the bonus of the answer question. I can tell you that I'm from new Jersey, which I usually cover in the first five minutes of every interview.
00:03:09 Megan Antonelli: So great. So and, and you mentioned a few things there and you have an incredible background, which is why I was so excited to, uh, talk to you and meet you and interview you. But, um, tell us a little bit about, you know, kind of your, your road from musician to one medical to now running octave, which is a mental health company and, and kind of the room you're in today.
00:03:33 Sandeep Acharya: Well, it's great to, you know, call me a musician. It's true. I have been a hobbyist musician, my, for most of my life. Um, but I was also a major in finance and tech, and it was always a thing that I was interested in on the side. Um, so I was a musician as a, as a hobby. And in college I toured with a band that did very well, ended up making an album on my own. The common thread in my career though, um, which moved from music to finance to health care, was. I just chased the. The things that I was obsessed with, the things that I was keeping myself up at night. And my thought was, I'm not sure this is like the most practical path, but I know that when I'm very passionate about something, I tend to deliver a lot better than when I'm not. Um, and so just following the things that made me curious is kind of how I ended up in very many different places that were always, that always led to amazing experiences. Um.
00:04:24 Megan Antonelli: So yeah, well, we, you know, I, my, um, my dad was a musician or is a musician and, uh, so I grew up with music around me all the time, for better or for worse. And I have no musical talent and can barely hold a tune. But I love it. And I think that art, much like, you know, we hear a lot about food as medicine, but I think art is, is much more related to medicine, uh, than, than we give it credit for. And I think it's, it's so important to talk about. But I love your background. And of course, you named octave about the musical interval. So tell us a little bit about, you know, that association for you. I actually, I just talked to Edmond Sy, who's a CIO over at, uh, Baptist, and he came, he was actually in the music business on the recording side in technology for a long time. So we talked about that for a bit. So it is, um, it's, you know, it's a, an interesting kind of connection. Tell us your perspective on that.
00:05:25 Sandeep Acharya: Yeah. So, you know, in my, in my music, which was a hobby and then turned into a quasi career, I was, I was assigned for a bit and produced and wrote an R&B album. Um, the thing about music is like when something's in tune, you could just tell, right? Um, you don't really need to be analytical. You observe it and you feel, um, an interaction that's in tune. I feel like I find that, um, the same brain that I use to write music, um, is a systems thinking brain. And so when I feel like a system is not working properly A lot of times my instinct is there before I understand why. And what got me interested in healthcare is that there's all these people who want to do the right thing, but they kind of come together in a weird jumble. And a lot of times people in our industry are quick to demonize certain parties. But the answer is actually more nuanced. It's not so much that one category or one hospital system or one payer is doing things wrong. It's the way that they're interacting with each other, and that's how music is. Um, if one note is played in the wrong in the wrong direction, the whole piece can sound off. And so sometimes the answer is more subtle than I think people give credit. And I think music taught me that.
00:06:32 Megan Antonelli: Wow. That's amazing. And, and so astute and so true. I mean, I think I've worked on kind of all different sides of, of healthcare and really have always been very aware of, of the stakeholders and the dynamics and how much that sort of blame game is easy within healthcare and it and yet within healthcare, everyone comes to it wanting the same outcome. Everybody wants it to sound good. Yet somehow we all know it's a little bit broken. You know, we, we, we live here in the South Bay. And I grew up in New York surrounded by the best doctors and incredible access all the time. And certainly if you wanted a therapist in New York City, it was pretty easy to get one. It might not be the same now, but, you know, in the eighties it was. But here I always joke with my friends in New York, I say, it's easier to find a psychic than it is to find a therapist. And part of that is the, the, you know, looking in your health plan of what covers it, what doesn't. But tell us a little bit about, you know, kind of your realization, your experience with that and what brought you to kind of find octave?
00:07:36 Sandeep Acharya: Yeah. And actually, it might be a good time to just quickly back up and tell you about my career. So, um, after working as an investor in healthcare, I got really interested in trying to improve the healthcare system. I wanted to work inside of innovative companies that were doing that. And so I ended up joining One medical as the head of strategy for four or five years and working inside the doctor's office. That's when I first encountered how many people were dealing with mental health needs. Um, you know, when you when you think about healthcare from like ten thousand feet, you think about chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension when you're trying to change outcomes. But what we learned on the ground a decade ago plus was that a lot of people were dealing with anxiety and depression. And that's what led to me founding octave. It is. We are a care provider that offers, um, mental health and therapy in network, but we are also a technology developer that is building tools that allow people to get into care. And that moment of friction that you're talking about is the one that I find really interesting that I've experienced as a patient that I've experienced, um, for family, friends, and loved ones. The gap between when you know you need something and how exactly you are helped is where things break down. That's the exact moment where things break down. Um, you would think that with, you know, hundreds of thousands, there's eight hundred thousand therapists nationwide would be easy to find one. But the breakdown is that it's actually really hard to know what you need. It's really hard to know who takes the insurance that you have. And then, because every therapist only takes about twenty to twenty five patients, it's really hard to know who's available. And so what a doctor's office used to do a decade ago is they'd hand you a written copy of Psychology Today, or they'd tell you to go to Psychology Today, and you'd be looking up lists, or you'd go to your insurance directory and you'd be looking at lists of providers, and you'd be calling them one by one. And after this painstaking process, you might get into a provider that actually isn't appropriate for you. And unfortunately, that results in a lot of people failing. Forty percent of people who use their insurance to access benefits, their, their, their mental health benefit fail in the first month. They don't successfully receive treatment. And, um, you know, I think that's a evidence of the fact that you can have all the right pieces. But if you break one thing in the system, the whole chain collapses. And that's where we are. That's where we've been. And unfortunately, we still are there. A decade later.
00:09:48 Megan Antonelli: Right? Yeah. No, it is interesting. And, you know, I think we've seen a lot to talk a little bit about one medical. Um, in terms of the primary care practices and building those. And some have not been as successful as one medical and one medical is pretty successful. Certainly here, um, you know, in this region in terms of your experience with that and now mental health, what are some of the kind of learnings that came from that?
00:10:13 Sandeep Acharya: Well, first of all, um, it's the first thing is just I loved the job of working inside of a healthcare provider organization. Like when you have the opportunity to be involved in patient care, even just supporting the doctors, there's a rush when you actually run into people who are like, so grateful for their own experiences with medical care. So that's a privilege. Um, but what I learned is like all of the complexity of dealing with insurance companies of navigating every single market is very, very different. Um, what it takes to run mission oriented companies because working at a healthcare company, you have to lead and communicate in a different fashion. Um, the people who you work with are very highly educated in ways that you don't have any training. And so how do you support them? Uh, and not try to dictate how they operate and how and in a thoughtful way. So that was a lot of what I learned at one medical, just a one on one on how healthcare works. I was really lucky to be inside of an organization that was national in scope. So there's big differences for receiving care in like Washington, D.C. versus like Philadelphia. And, um, and you wouldn't know that unless you got on the ground, which I have been now for over a decade. Um, and all the nuances with how payers operate, it's just, it's something that there's no replacement for the experience.
00:11:30 Megan Antonelli: Yeah, I know it is. It is amazing. I mean, just from my side of things, even running events and we used to run health impact regionally where we would be in Texas. And you know, Houston is different from Dallas and Philadelphia is different from Pittsburgh. I mean, it is very local. A lot of it is determined by the payer makeup and balance of that as well as the employer makeup. You know, we think so much as I talked about, you know, in terms of what the physician makeup and the provider makeup is, but the payer and the employer market kind of drives that. But to talk a little bit about, you know, in terms of mental health, because I think the access issues there are far and above, you know, sort of more challenging than kind of what one medical delivers, which is easy to access primary care. And they do an amazing job at it. Um, but with mental health, it is much harder. Why is it harder? Is it about insurance? Is it, is it, you know, shortage? What's the, what's the sort of dynamic that's happening there that makes finding a good therapist just so hard?
00:12:31 Sandeep Acharya: Well, you know, I think when I started, I thought, we're definitely operating inside of a market that has a shortage. Um, back then it was very hard in twenty eighteen, when I started octave, it was hard to get therapists to actually see folks virtually. Um, the pandemic changed that in a lot in a very healthy way. Um, today in the state of California, Over sixty percent of people access care virtually, which is great because it allows you to have more choice. I actually think the problem is more about distribution. People don't really know how to access what is actually readily available. Believe it or not, there are therapists who are struggling to fill the last four or five patients on their caseload. While there are patients who are struggling to find therapists who are appropriate for them. And so I think there's a lot of complexity to it. But I think, um, that it's a distribution problem. The other thing is just people are so different, their needs are so different. And so being able to, it's much harder than just finding a primary care doctor where you could find one of five and they could mostly treat everything that you have a person who specializes in, say, um, OCD is very different from someone who specializes in eating disorders. And sometimes we don't even have the words to understand which thing we're actually dealing with ourselves. And so you have to learn in that process. I think those are some of the things that make it really hard. But thankfully, those are the things that technology can help us fix. I don't think technology, um, right now is fundamentally altering the process of human connection. Like the way you connect with a therapist is probably very similar to the way you would have connected with a therapist a decade ago. But I think technology can make it a lot easier to find the right one, right to find the right match for you, and to support proving out that the treatment is working. And that's what I think a lot of us in this industry have been focused on.
00:14:14 Megan Antonelli: Yeah. That's interesting. I hadn't really thought about that, but it is a different choice. I think when you you know, when you choose a primary care or something, prefer a man, prefer a woman, prefer a certain educational background, but with, with a therapist it is, you know, it's more about what you need, where you are in your life, what you're looking for. And then yes, some of the major, you know, kind of quality measures and things like that. How are you, as you know, within octave looking at kind of the quality measures and the therapists that you put through the network.
00:14:48 Sandeep Acharya: Well, there's some really common measures that you can use across, uh, quality measures. Um, uh, the one that, you know, that that folks have been focused on for a while is patient reported outcomes. So just determining, are people getting better according to these standard surveys, uh, G a d seven and the PHQ nine are measures of anxiety and depression and just assessing a person before they get into treatment. And then throughout the course of treatment is actually both something that has been called for for a long time and yet is still not standard practice. Um, but really, really important. But beyond that, delivering those outcomes requires alliance. So you trust your therapist. So one of the things that we do is we ask patients at three to four sessions, where are you? We ask them five questions that help get at how strong is your trust level? Um, with, with the therapist, because the studies show that no matter what modality, however, whatever treatment type you have, the most predictive, um, variable of whether or not you're going to be successful in treatment, or whether the treatment is going to be successful for you, is your therapeutic alliance. And so being able to do that well is, is really important. So we've been we've, we think about that a lot. And there's a lot that we're doing, um, in the, in the, in the, in the product we launched called wise match to be able to kind of get, um, quality across the system, but those are how we handle it for all the, all the direct patients that we treat.
00:16:10 Break: You're listening to digital health talks. When we return, we'll continue our discussion on how technology is revolutionizing healthcare delivery. Stay with us to hear more insights on creating sustainable, patient centered digital health solutions.
00:16:29 Megan Antonelli: So tell us a little bit about how it works and kind of where it sits within the scheme of getting, you know, getting access, increasing access and, and, you know, for those looking for therapists and, and the healthcare system it sits in.
00:16:43 Sandeep Acharya: Yeah. Octave has two units. The first one is a care group. We offer we offer about um, we have about two thousand therapists who are part of our network of providers who practice independently, but have met our quality standards and screens who still accept insurance in twenty three states across the country. Um, we are mostly in California, but we have presence across across those twenty three states, including New York, new Jersey, um, where I grew up and out in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania as well. Um, and then in addition to that, we operate a product called wise match wise match uses, um, integrations with several technology platforms to offer a network of one hundred thousand mental health providers across the country accepting all forms of insurance. Um, and so wise match is a, is a tool that we have actually begun deploying inside of insurance directories. We've learned that about a third of all patients in the country access their insurance directory first. So when they're looking for care, they go to their insurance directory. And instead of getting those static lists with phone numbers, we're actually allowing them to book, find and book and filter with a therapist. So search for a therapist who's available at a specific time, treats a specific kind of condition and specializes in the things that you need. And we make it that much easier for people to get care right there, which we think can help solve the problem of people not really knowing how to use their benefits for care.
00:18:12 Megan Antonelli: Right. Which is a lot of where that friction happens, right? I mean, you get your, you know, you're told that, you know, you should talk to someone, you want to talk to someone, you get the, the referral and then you call, you search, you call, you search, you leave messages and they don't call back. You know, I mean, you know, so the those lists themselves, whether out, out, outdated or, you know, they've filled their role for that insurance company, what have you, um, you know, it, it's very challenging, you know, I've certainly had the challenge myself and it. It is interesting in terms of especially now where you can, you know, look at some of these virtual networks and virtual tools to, to see behavioral health. Now, where, where do you guys sit in that, in terms of that space and kind of what you see coming out of it in terms of quality, efficacy, even with the providers? Do they like it? What's the what's the status there?
00:19:11 Sandeep Acharya: Um, so we have signed partnerships with two of the largest insurance directory companies in the country. We're in the process of going live with several, um, blues plans around, around the country. We can't announce them yet. They're going live over the course of the next couple of months. Um, we have a partnership, uh, that we will be announcing later this month, um, with a large tech company, um, that has a, that has a lot of people searching for care. Um, and we're very excited about that. And in terms of the opportunity, what we are trying. What we are trying to do is make it so that no matter what platform you use or what group you work with, um, we're going to put you to the top and suggest you to the patient if you're the right provider for their needs. So we've created this, this tool called the wise Match Index, which scores the match of a patient with a provider based on what we know about the provider. And what I've been pleasantly surprised by is even folks who were nominally our competitors who used to be our, we used to consider our competitors are asking for this. They're asking for better ability to compete on quality, to be investing in promoting the folks who are doing the best work. I think what's unique about mental health relative to many other industries is most people have gotten in the industry because they are mission oriented, because they themselves have been affected, or a loved one has been affected. And so, um, it makes it a lot easier to work with folks in our industry. Um, so we're grateful for that.
00:20:36 Megan Antonelli: Yeah, no, that's great. And I, you know, I think the, when we look at kind of where technology sits in all of this and how how it's made some things easier, you know, and things like keeping things up to date, you know, those have always been these kind of bottlenecks, right? The provider network, uh, various other things that kind of become the bottleneck either for the patient or for the administration side. This seems like it really covers that. Tell us a little bit about your experience and speaking with, I mean, you said some competitors are looking at this in terms of the payers and, and what you think it could change about how, you know, patients are kind of handed off to mental health care in terms of what it should look like when everything's running well.
00:21:23 Sandeep Acharya: Yeah, that's a great, great question. And one thing you asked me, that's the question that's been sticking with me, was like, what did you learn at One medical? And one thing I do want to highlight is there's a lot of people who know healthcare, and there's a lot of people who know technology, but it's actually really hard to understand how technology works in healthcare, right? Like when I was entering healthcare, there's all these people who are like, why do we still have fax machines? And like fifteen years later, we still have fax machines in every doctor's office because the people who understand technology don't understand like how hard it is to change workflows for providers. And I raised that because, um, I think that, um, the change that we need in mental health care is actually a slight shift to the way that we operate technology, um, and the infrastructure we've built. And so you ask the question around what's the proof that our product is working? What's the impact it'll have to payers? Um, I mentioned that forty percent of patients are quitting, um, in the first month of treatment. That's evidence that the, that we're seeing too much folks being failed by the system at octave in our care group. Actually, the number is closer to twenty percent. I would like our entire industry to deliver at at that rate, I would like to see half the number of patients quitting out of the system than do. Um, and I would love to see, um, you know, all of the folks in our, in our industry raise the bar as a result of there being a higher standard for care. That's the one measure I care about is can we increase the odds that the next patient entering the system is successful? If we've done that, then we've done our job right.
00:22:59 Megan Antonelli: And you're I mean, you're doing that in two ways because you're making it so that the access itself is easier, but also through wise match. The match is even better. Right? So you're, you're kind of handling it in two ways. And that comes down to kind of the, the part of that about the patient experience. And I know you yourself have been, of course, have been a patient, but have recently gone through a cancer treatment while running the company. Tell us a little bit about your story there and kind of what being a patient has changed about your perspective on all of this.
00:23:30 Sandeep Acharya: Thank you. Yeah. Um, and I mentioned we've been talking a lot about insurance directories, but the truth is that people are looking for care everywhere. And these days folks are using LMS a lot. Um, uh, so about a year ago, I was diagnosed with a thyroid cancer. Um, it was a surprise thing. I was at the dentist office and the dental assistant was like, your neck has a lump. And I was like, no, it doesn't, you know, um, and luckily I had my one medical appointment a month later and my doc was like, yeah, it does. And I went and got an imaging study and proved that I had early stage thyroid cancer. Um, and I would have to remove half of my thyroid, um, which is, you know, um, of all the cancers, I was very thankful that very low risk, um, for me, but the one risk is that you would, um, for someone who has been a lifelong singer that I would not have, uh, I would have some complications from surgery and have a hoarse voice the rest of my life. And so, um, what I did is I called all the doctors in my family. And unfortunately, the Indian American stereotype of having doctors in your family is true. I got like twenty of them, and I asked them who the best doctors were to operate, and we found the best thyroid cancer surgeon we could find. And he did a great job. But in that process, there was a measure of guilt because all of us healthcare insiders who know people, we all know how to get the best care. But why can't everyone get that? Um, you know, one of the things that I have loved about AI and there's a lot of problematic aspects of AI, but what I see as an opportunity to level the playing field. Um, I would love for it to be the case that every single person has the ability to access who the best provider is for their given need. And I think what that would do is it would force us all to raise our game. Uh, so that that, uh, personal episode about a year and a half ago, going through it helped me realize that some of the things that we're doing in behavioral health are actually interesting for all specialties. Um, and we're thinking really hard about ways that are matching and screening technology and some of the work that we're building, um, can also work in other verticals, right?
00:25:34 Megan Antonelli: What an amazing story. And I'm so glad that you found the right care and got the treatment. Yeah. No. And it is. And you're right. Everyone should have access to that. And what an insurance directory or even the simple algorithms of what feeds you. You know, here's the provider in your region, you know, doesn't give you the specifics of what you're looking for in that kind of nuanced, you know, complexity of health care, you know, and, and that's, I think when, when we all point to the problems and point to point fingers about who's who's fault, it is, you know, at the end of the day, healthcare is so complex and the needs of the patient are so specific that the more we get general, the harder it is to deliver. So the power of some of these tools and, and what makes me happy that there are so many innovators like you who are working on solutions that are maybe to some degree niche, but have, you know, real significant impact on patient experience and, and the and the care that they get and the outcomes that matter.
00:26:38 Sandeep Acharya: And, you know, it's interesting, um, because you asked the question and it did force me to think I'm a little bit of a musician that I tend to hone on one thing and I just keep repeating it like the chorus, right? So the thing that I keep thinking about is how do we make a healthcare system where the best provider wins, right? And not the one who works at this hospital system with the most clout, or the one who's really good at marketing. But like, I want it to be super clear when someone does great work, because that's going to make us all raise our game. So if I can just accomplish one thing that could realign the system, it's making it really clear who's the best for a given patient and then forcing folks to compete on that. So that's, that's, that's, that's the, that's the whole story for us as a company. That's what we've been chasing from day one. That's what I've been chasing in my career since my one medical days. And that's what I'll continue to chase.
00:27:28 Megan Antonelli: Well, I love it. And I love the music analogy to that of the chorus in terms of, you know, making the, provider the provider. The best providers win and and the nuance that the best provider for one is not the best for another. So this isn't a zero sum game where, you know, a bunch go to the bottom, but it's where the right one wins to the right patient, right?
00:27:49 Sandeep Acharya: Absolutely right. And this is not a value story. Um, in the sense that I think providers have the opportunity to improve. And if they don't have any visibility into how they're doing into what works and what doesn't, then how can they? Right. Um, and that's the thing that we're losing in healthcare. That's the thing we don't have is enough transparency.
00:28:08 Megan Antonelli: Absolutely. Yeah. No, I think it's interesting. Tell us a little bit about how the, the product and the program is received within the health insurance side of things. And, and, and I guess, where do you see looking out, uh, how that's how maybe that's changing in terms of, you know, kind of mental health, behavioral health and how payers and providers are working together in that space.
00:28:32 Sandeep Acharya: Yeah. So a couple of things. Our product is actually free of charge for the insurance plans. Um, what we've done is our collective um, base of providers has funded the API build. So it's like, it's like everyone is investing in the common railroad and that allows us to, to benefit. Um, and so, uh, the payers have been largely like, this is a no brainer. Um, because they've been struggling with offering access, um, and, and organizing it, they keep contracting with different provider groups, but they don't have a means of offering it on their own. I think the biggest thing that payers are dealing with right now is across the healthcare, um, landscape is rising premium dollars. It's very, very expensive. They're seeing double digit trend in mental health and have been for the last three to five years. So one of the things that they want to make sure is that there's not wasteful spend. Um, and there's ways that I think driving provider selection can help, uh, avoid that. And they're spending a lot of time thinking, do we need every single provider in the network. I view that as separate. Um, that said, uh, by and large, payers have been extremely supportive. Uh, this is functionality they're trying to use because actually, uh, payers are realizing that there is a need. There's a raising bar on the digital experience. Uh, the large nationals have done a lot of work to improve the digital experience on their payer portals. And so everyone else is kind of racing to catch up. And I think we're supportive to all of our payer partners in that way.
00:30:03 Megan Antonelli: Yeah. No, it's interesting to see how it's evolved. I mean, I've sort of followed kind of the mental health space for a long time. And, and the payer market and the payer market in mental health in some ways, particularly in Medicaid being more advanced than the employer side. You know, I mean, there's access there where there's not necessarily in commercial and employers, but it's evolving and changing. And I do think some of the digital products and the things that make administering the programs easier will allow that to happen. So that's great. I love the work that you're doing. One of the things that we do on on the show too, is we always say, what are the five good things? We have a five good things segment, but and we always ask our guests, what is one good thing happening in healthcare that maybe the rest of us are missing? Or maybe it's, it's out there in plain sight, but it's, it's your, it's what you're most excited about.
00:30:57 Sandeep Acharya: Well, I think I'm really interested in, um, like a lot of the price transparency work, um, and how much more empowered between price transparency and AI, like a sophisticated consumer has the opportunity to learn a lot more about what their needs are. So like, I actually think that the playing field being leveled between patients who are trying to navigate the system and providers or incumbents that make it really hard, um, is, is being facilitated by AI. So I think just AI for consumer discovery is generally positive, although there's some really bad examples of that too. Um, of irresponsible deployment of overdependency on AI for mental health support. I think there's a lot of things that are happening that are kind of wild, wild West with the use of chat bots. But with that said, like, I think when used properly, there's been some really powerful examples of how people can be helped and be better empowered to help themselves.
00:31:53 Megan Antonelli: Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's, uh, right on point. And I think, I mean, the price transparency thing, which of course is another thing that we've been fighting for for so long and thinking, you know, why isn't this easier? And it has a little bit to do with incentive stakeholders or, you know, where people sit in terms of, of healthcare. Uh, but we are seeing it move forward and we're seeing a lot of it because of technology, because of the AI sort of delivering that transparency, making it easier or making in some ways the, the, the battle of the bots kind of play out there in a more objective land. And then you've, you know, kind of getting I mean, I've been reading about some, you know, some prior authorizations going away, some certain things because now they're just seeing that, you know, they're trying to save tokens because they're just doing it all the time. So there's an interesting element to technology that we're not that, that we don't talk about as much in, you know, sort of in, in the normal conference scene and in these in, in the articles that you see about it of these benefits, um, that, so that I think that's really a great, a great one for sure. Tell our audience where they can find you and, and how they can get in touch with octave and learn more about it.
00:33:06 Sandeep Acharya: Yeah. So, um, my name is Sandeep Acharya. You can find me on LinkedIn. Uh, that's where I'm most actively right? Sometimes on Twitter, but mostly longer form. I don't fit in that many, that few characters. Um, uh, my company octave Health, um, is at find octave as a handle on Instagram. We're more active there in TikTok. Uh, we tend to post more, you know, consumer mental health content, but that's where you tend to find us.
00:33:30 Megan Antonelli: Great. Well, thank you so much, Sandy. Such a pleasure to meet you and learn more about octave and and, you know, let our audience know about that. And I think, um, you know, your, your background as, as a singer and a musician and as a patient and, and your founder story is really an interesting one to us. And, and it resonates so well with our health impact community. So thank you for being here. I encourage our audience to reach out, uh, and find octave online at octave online and reach out to Sandeep as well. And if this conversation got you thinking, that is the whole point, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Subscribe to Digital Health Talks and follow us on YouTube at Health Impact Live. I am Megan Antonelli, CEO of Health Impact Live. And this is Digital Health Talks. Let's keep fixing health care one conversation at a time.
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