Mikata co-founder, Meaghan Nolan, was recently featured on CBC’s “This Is Calgary” podcast,...
As Mika turns five, we reflect on its journey from a simple chatbot to a game-changing AI-powered assistant for healthcare providers. To celebrate this milestone, we sat down with co-founders Kyle Nishiyama and Meaghan Nolan. They share their experiences, discuss the challenges they've faced, and offer their vision for Mika’s future.
Q1: Mika is turning 5 years old! Take us back to when your first customer used Mika.
Meaghan: "Our first customer for Mika as an AI-powered medical scribe was a doctor in Halifax, NS. It was humbling, as it always is, when somebody tries the thing you’re very excited about for the first time and you instantly realize a million and one ways that it could be better. It’s also exciting. It’s very special to be there for the moment a product goes from theoretical to “in real life.”
Kyle: "For me, it goes back further than Mika as an AI-powered medical scribe. I remember when we were first launching our other products, such as automated appointment reminders, and at that time we would go to clinics in person and install the software on their computers computers. The moment we clicked “go” and our appointment reminders started going out to hundreds if not thousands of patients within seconds - it was extremely stressful. I remember getting in the car afterwards and saying ‘Well, that just happened.’ So, you have to start somewhere. It’s been exciting to see how we’ve grown and changed from that starting point.
Q2: Why did you decide on the name Mika and how does that translate into how our products are developed?
Meaghan: "Mikata is a Japanese word for ally or helper. We really liked that because we do see technology being an ally for both patients and doctors. We want to be that ally or helper that can take on tedious tasks and free up time for healthcare providers. We also want to be that ally or helper for patients and make it easy for them to be a part of their care.”
Q3: Mikata has built a really comprehensive suite of patient engagement tools such as appointment reminders, online appointment booking, and secure patient messaging that are used and loved by many clinics. What inspired the development of our AI-powered medical scribe?
Kyle: "It comes back to our overall mission, which is to automate tasks that are best done by computers and let people who work in healthcare get back to the more important things. We started with a lot of the front-end booking and communication tasks, and once we’d built a really solid platform that saved administrative staff time, we naturally started looking at where providers were spending most of their time, like charting and what we could do there. Something that’s really unique about our platform compared to other tools out there is that we integrate both provider and staff workflows, which allows us to offer much more powerful automations that others can’t.”
Meaghan: "To Kyle’s point, we started off in these front-end workflows and built up from there.
It’s always been on our radar that charting is where providers spend most of their time and it’s one of the most burnout-inducing tasks they have to do. In 2022, our patient engagement tools had reached a level of maturity and, as Kyle mentioned, we were thinking about what more we could do. We sat down with 10 physicians and put together a slide deck with a bunch of ideas - 10 out of 10 providers said that they would love to have something that helped them with charting. At the same time, we had the opportunity to sneak a really early peek at generative AI technology and this sold us on the idea that there was a huge demand for an AI scribe amongst healthcare providers and the technology was emerging to make it a reality."
Q4: How does it feel to see Mika go from booking and communication tools to AI Scribe, in a short amount of time [2018 to 2024]?
Meaghan: “Well, it’s awesome. One thing I think is really cool, seeing the evolution over the years, is that our mission has always stayed the same and Mika has always been there in one form or another.
Our mission has always been trying to take care of the things that get in the way of patient care. We want to build technology that frees up healthcare teams to care for their patients. So, while we started with the first variation of Mika doing reminders for patient appointments today we have this leading-edge AI-powered scribe, that thread is there.
Kyle: “To add to Meaghan’s point, it’s cool to see how much more Mika is able to do and how that’s been guided by our customers. We want to take more off of the teams’s plate and continue to rely on our customers to point us in the right direction."
Q5: AI Scribes are gaining traction in the healthcare industry due to burnout and providers wanting to gain some personal time back. We’ve talked about how the integration of our patient engagement tools is one thing that sets us apart from other scribes. What are some other aspects that differentiate us?
Kyle: "One of the main things we’ve heard from providers how easy it is to use."
Meaghan: "Another differentiator is the level of care and support that our team provides, which is something that our customers mention all the time."
Q6: What user feedback has been the most influential in shaping Mikata as a whole and how does that benefit our customers?
Kyle: “We try to pay attention to all the feedback we get! We find the differences and commonalities and we think about what we can do to meet those needs. It helps shape what we build. One of the comments from a doctor recently that I think sums up what we strive for is that they said Mika was one of the first pieces of healthcare software that actually saved them time. It’s awesome to hear that.”
Meaghan: “Our customers are at the core of our approach. We take in feedback through our sales and customer success teams. We go out to customers and ask them for feedback during the design process. They’re our North Star.”
Q7: Looking 3-5 years into the future, where do you see Mikata and what exciting developments can our customers look forward to?
Meaghan: “Our goal for Mikata is to create this really comprehensive platform that can be used in many different ways to transform how healthcare teams deliver patient care. I think we will absolutely be continuing to focus on scribe and how that connects to the rest of our patient engagement tools. There’s a lot of tasks that have to occur after a patient visit, like billing and rebooking, and I’m excited to delve into those things. “
Kyle: “There’s studies that show providers spend 49% of their day on menial tasks so our overall goal is to bring that down to zero. If providers don’t have to focus their time on these tasks then more time can go into what they want to do, which is patient care. Our patient engagement tools and now scribe are just the tip of the iceberg of the tasks we want to automate and take care of for providers and patients.”
This September, Kyle, Meaghan, and others from Team Mikata will be attending the OMD Educates: Digital Health Conference in Toronto ON, the OMGMA Conference in London ON, and the AACM Conference in Edmonton AB. Be sure to stop by and say hello! We’d love to show you a demo of Mika AI (and we’re known to give away great swag items!).