What (or Who?) is Hank?

Hank is a cognitive automation platform that combines traditional machine learning with crowdsourced knowledge to automate repetitive decision-making tasks.

What is cognitive automation?

Cognitive automation is an emerging form of augmented artificial intelligence that seeks to replicate human decision-making processes by combining traditional machine learning with more advanced techniques like natural language understanding, reinforcement learning, and collective intelligence.

What does Hank do?

Hank helps medical coders increase their productivity and accuracy by providing an easy to use interface for manual keyword searches against our database of medical codes (free) and transforming free text medical records into a list of the most probable codes (trainer or paid).

How does Hank work?

Hank's basic interface is a side panel which offers coders a fast keyword search - returning relevant codes and guidance. Hank's advanced interface allows coders to submit ENTIRE RECORDS to Hank. Hank sends them to his secure servers for processing and returns a list of probable codes along with an annotated copy of the free text contained in the record. Coders select a probable code and Hank highlights the words (or values) in the record that provide support for that code.

How does Hank's advanced interface deal with protected health information?

First, Hank strips easily identifiable PHI from the record on the client side (i.e. on your local computer) before sending it to his server for processing. This goes a long way toward removing the majority of the protected information, but advances in big data processing are making it easier for companies to identify a specific person from less and less data. With that in mind, advanced users will also need to sign an agreement with Hank stating that limited protected health information may be processed remotely on secure, HIPAA compliant servers.

How do I use Hank's advanced interface?

Select the standard print function in your EMR system and choose the preinstalled Hank printer to submit the record, or simply copy the text of the record and paste it into Hank's input field. When processing is complete, a list of codes along with the processed text will appear in Hank’s user interface.

Is Hank Computer Assisted Coding (CAC) software?

Yes. And no. Hank is similar to traditional CAC software - with one key difference. Hank elicits feedback and explanations from his users in order to improve continuously. And he will pay you for this expertise. Not only does Hank assist with medical coding, he pays you to teach him how to assist you better! Hank's back end is also capable of being deployed in conjunction with other software platforms to automate verification, missed-claim capture, and auditing tasks which have traditionally been too cost prohibitive for humans to perform at scale.

How will I provide feedback to Hank?

In the basic interface, simply select the correct code from the returned list or input the correct code if it wasn't returned. For trainers using Hank's advanced interface, feedback will be in the form of a free text explanation, but you will be provided with a few standard phrases to use when correcting codes to ensure Hank understands what he got wrong. Your adherence to our suggested phrasing will be a part of how your feedback is rated.

Why is Hank paying medical coders to help him learn?

Hank doesn’t know everything. He needs help. He needs to learn from a wide variety of experts in order to become an expert himself. Knowledge acquisition isn’t cheap. Ask any recent college graduate! With this in mind, Hank understands the value of medical coders’ expertise and is excited to reward them with financial incentives for helping him learn their specialty.

What are the 'content contribution requirements' for becoming a trainer?

Simply provide quality feedback to Hank when the codes he suggests aren't ideal. In addition, Hank will briefly retain a list of the features that he deemed relevant to selecting the correct code alongside your feedback. As soon as he has completed the processing required to incorporate your insights into his future decisions, this additional information will be permanently deleted.

Is Hank HIPAA compliant?

Yes. Hank was developed by a team of experienced IT and healthcare professionals and goes to great lengths to ensure that no protected health information is compromised. Hank's servers are 100% secure and HIPAA compliant.

How do I install Hank?

Very easily. Just download and run Hank's install file.

What are the system requirements to install Hank?

Hank requires very little resources and can be installed on any modern operating system.

Why does the world need Hank?

The US healthcare system is full of built-in costs related to services that add little or no value to patient outcomes. Traditional approaches have failed to prevent these costs from growing at rates far higher than those associated with actual patient care. Hank was made to learn and automate some of these expensive backend processes decreasing wasteful spending and returning capital to where it truly belongs - helping patients.