[00:00:00] If you're looking to grow your business as a registered dietitian, you've come to the right place. If you're not sure what to do or what steps to take next so that you can create flexibility and freedom in your life, then you're going to learn a lot from tuning into our podcast here at DietitianBoss.
[00:00:17] I'm Libby Rothschild, the founder of DietitianBoss, a [00:00:20] fellow registered dietitian and business owner. And in our podcast, I share some The highs and the lows. And I talk all about how to grow your business, get it started. And I interview our clients to date. We've had over 200 interviews from clients who share their journey on our podcast, dietitian boss.
[00:00:37] Abigail Kiso is Practice [00:00:40] Better's chief growth officer and co founder of That Clean Life. While working at a pediatric hospital as a registered nurse, Abigail started healthy eating challenges and curating meal plans for fellow nurses during long shifts. This quickly caught fire, turning into a passion project that eventually became That Clean Life, a nutrition planning tool [00:01:00] designated specifically for health and wellness professionals.
[00:01:03] That Clean Life was acquired by Practice Better last year. Abigail lives in Toronto, Canada, and you can find out about her more on LinkedIn and through her sub stack, all found in today's show notes at dietitianboss. com. So excited to have you here, Abigail. And I was wondering if [00:01:20] you could talk a little bit more about AI, which is really exciting in dietetics practice.
[00:01:25] What is AI and why do dietitians need to incorporate AI with their practice? Yeah, great question. A I stands for artificial intelligence. And the way I think about it is that a [00:01:40] I is technology that allows computers to think and learn like humans. And we're starting to see a I being used in health care and by dietitians in like a variety of ways.
[00:01:53] So dietitians can leverage a I to save time. They can leverage it to build their [00:02:00] business. Streamlining tasks that are really tedious and manual and take a lot of time. And you know, marketing tasks as well, like writing your social media posts, you can use AI for that. And then in the broader healthcare setting, we're also seeing AI being used for clinical decision making.
[00:02:16] So I think it's, it won't be too long before we see it being [00:02:20] used by dietitians for that as well. That's amazing. Can you give an example of clinical decision making? Yeah there was one I saw actually last week, and it's it's more in the traditional like E. M. R. Space, and you it scans your E. H. R.
[00:02:36] Basically, a I scans your E. H. R. And it can detect [00:02:40] sepsis so it can flag to clinicians about 4 to 6 hours earlier to predict sepsis in a patient, which is really neat. And then it's also being used to detect E. M. R. Space. Like immune diseases, rare immune diseases that are usually really hard to detect.
[00:02:54] And that it's the same kind of situation where they're using AI to scan data from [00:03:00] EHRs, which is really neat. Yeah, incredible and obviously we're talking about AI that is HIPAA compliant, right? So because we know now that some of the versions out there, I just want to make sure there's a disclaimer that I don't want dieticians listening and thinking that they can go charting and all of that without using a HIPAA compliant AI [00:03:20] platform.
[00:03:20] So, do you want to speak a little bit to that? Just to make because our clients are very and our listeners are very much into safety. Yeah, that's a great question. It's a great flag. And I think that's a lot of. There's a common hesitation amongst health care professionals about using AI, not only because of like the accuracy of it, but also the security of it.
[00:03:38] So it is really [00:03:40] important as a health care professional to make sure the AI solutions you are using are HIPAA compliant, and that's really what we're working on at Practice Better. So ensuring that we build AI in a way that's safe. HIPAA compliant built right into the EHR is of utmost important to us.
[00:03:55] And the way we're doing this is with AI dictation, so you can talk your [00:04:00] notes after a client session, and that's all kept secure within practice better, which is HIPAA compliant. And then same with AI charting assistant. You can record your notes. Sessions. And then afterwards, the AI charting assistant can summarize your note, whether you want to do it in soap format or narrative format to save you time from that note [00:04:20] taking as well.
[00:04:20] And all in a HIPAA compliant way that keeps your client information secure. Are you finding that dietitians or clinicians in general, but especially dietitians, if you have that data, are they using that feature? Are they excited about it? Or are they more of like late adopters? Yeah, we're seeing a really great adoption with it, and the people who are [00:04:40] using it are loving it, and I think the more people who get comfortable and are kind of sharing their success with it, the more practitioners we're going to see adopt it.
[00:04:49] Like I said, there is some hesitation with AI, and I totally understand that. But the results are pretty cool. So we're seeing it's helping our practitioners complete their [00:05:00] charting about 50 percent faster. It's saving them up to 15 hours a month, which can then be used to either see more clients if you want to do that.
[00:05:10] Or they're of course like self care to avoid burnout. And we've done some math and we've figured out that this can help them earn about 2, [00:05:20] 400 more a month with that time they save from using it. So while there can be hesitations to using it, I think the upside is, is, you know, the, the. Pros outweigh the cons.
[00:05:31] Absolutely. And I would agree with that. And whether it's a solo practice or a group practice, the benefits are tremendous. So just [00:05:40] what you had said in terms of why it's important to use it in dietetics practice, or specifically charting is because it saves time and helps the practitioner earn more money, whether that's a solo practitioner, or if you're owning a group practice, and you want to make sure that your clinicians are using AI to help them with their workflow as well.
[00:05:58] So that would. You know, save the business [00:06:00] money and energy because, you know, a lot of dietitians get hung up in the admin. I think that's what I see is the biggest fear and private practices. Oh, gosh, whether it's typically with insurance, but cash pay to, you know, there's just a lot involved. And so anything to speed up that process is obviously much more attractive.
[00:06:18] Yeah, for sure. And there's so much you [00:06:20] can do with that saved time. Like you said, like it can reduce burnout, but it can also help you make more money in the long run. Or focus on your marketing efforts, right? So try to, whether it's getting, getting more clients or maybe adding in some type of a program to create some passive income through practice, better programming or something [00:06:40] of that nature, some reoccurring subscriptions, things of that nature that we don't have time for.
[00:06:43] Right. Yes, exactly. Because I hear that from dietitians all the time saying like, this sounds great, but I don't have time to do it. So I can really help you free up that time to be able to invest in things like that. And we are seeing now that you mentioned it, we are seeing our practitioners have a lot of [00:07:00] success with building programs and courses within practice better and then using that to generate recurring revenue.
[00:07:07] So. That's yeah, that's another area. It kind of frees you up to do. Yeah. And that's what I see is, is the futures. I want dietitians to have an opportunity to create forms of income that are not just active income. So, I see that [00:07:20] I can help us have an opportunity to create courses, membership subscriptions, things that allow us to be a little more hands off and we can only do that if we have the energy.
[00:07:29] So that that gets me excited. Yeah. Now, in terms of. Examples of using AI and dietetics practice, and in terms of what works and what doesn't, is there any other [00:07:40] examples beyond what we have been focusing on, which would be charting? Yeah 1 really cool when we've introduced with that clean life is.
[00:07:47] AI Health Insights, and what AI Health Insights do is it allows you to enrich the recipes and meal plans that you're providing with your clients with education. So, dieticians do [00:08:00] spend a lot of time on client education, and with AI, what you can do is build that education right into your nutrition plans, and we built this into that clean life, so that when you go to a recipe, it has those health insights, it's like, oh, this recipe is great for me.
[00:08:16] Phone health or this is great for supporting your [00:08:20] immunity. All those like little kind of interesting information about the qualities of the recipe can be communicated with a patient without you having to do a thing. It's just there for you and all AI generated. So then when you say AI generated, is there some ways that practitioners can easily address that [00:08:40] information to meet the education level of the patient and make sure that it's not just, you know, general information?
[00:08:46] Like, how does that look? Yeah. So we don't allow you to edit the AI health insights yet, but it's something that we're, we're considering. It's all automatically generated and it's meant it's, it's really high level and it's meant to save the [00:09:00] practitioner time from kind of having to manually go in. And edit them.
[00:09:04] So if you decided you didn't want to provide that to your clients or that, you know, it's too much information or it's too little information, you can always exclude it from your nutrition plans as well. Awesome. Yeah, that's that's really exciting. And what would you say in terms of tips for [00:09:20] incorporating AI with your practice?
[00:09:22] Say anything or maybe specific examples with marketing, which we haven't covered as much. Yeah, well, in terms of tips for incorporating a I and your private practice, I think looking for that right each are with that's kind of like all in one that's embracing a [00:09:40] I because as As we know, like a lot of EHRs are kind of behind the curve when it comes to that and comes to adopting AI.
[00:09:47] So making sure that you're looking for an EHR and using an EHR that is embracing it is really important. And it's also important, what I mentioned before is that HIPAA compliance, that you are using AI in a way that is HIPAA [00:10:00] compliant. And then outside like the HIPAA compliance stuff, in terms of marketing, which you just mentioned, one thing I found a lot of our practitioners are using AI for is like writing.
[00:10:11] Dietitians that are smart marketers are have to do a ton of writing, blog content, newsletters, social media content, and [00:10:20] AI can really help with that. A lot of our practitioners are using chat GPT for that to generate those social captions and blog posts. I will say with that, it kind of, I don't know if you've used chat GPT too much, but it kind of spits out pretty generic things.
[00:10:36] And it, I think it's our world is. So many people are using it and our [00:10:40] world's kind of coming to the point where we can recognize chat GPT. So what I use it for is it gives you a good base, but then as a practitioner, you can go in and edit it and kind of make it sound more like your own voice and tone or use the prompting within chat GPT to kind of shape it to get yourself to a place where you have content written.
[00:10:59] [00:11:00] Faster, but that also sounds like you. Yeah, there's a learning curve for sure. And learning how to write the prompts and clearly ask what you need. I would say that that's what's important. So not asking general questions, but yeah, it's a concern that we, you know, if everybody's using it in dietetics, then the [00:11:20] information can sound general.
[00:11:21] Well, so I think this just takes some time in a learning curve to properly ask questions using your voice and make sure that you are. Working with continuing to ask questions to chat GPT to edit and make sure you're refining your questions. But yes, we use it here. We teach it in terms of how our clients can maximize [00:11:40] their time and energy with marketing, because it can be great for generating ideas.
[00:11:44] If, you know, some keywords in your business, you can use chat to leverage ideas you already have. So, yeah, it's definitely really helpful and can save time and energy with. So many things that's, it could be a whole nother podcast episode, but I think today we're, we're focusing a [00:12:00] little bit more on the, on the charting piece, it seems, which is, I agree with you all in one is better than trying to piecemeal an EMR that doesn't have or integrate with AI.
[00:12:09] So, can you talk a little bit briefly about the benefits of choosing an EMR, like practice better that integrates with AI versus the piecemeal approach, which I know clinicians that are [00:12:20] doing both. Yeah, the piecemeal approach, I feel like it works fine in the early days, but it doesn't scale as you're kind of growing your dietetics practice and, you know, having everything in one place, like that alone will save you time that you can do everything within your EHR, that you're not bouncing back and forth to [00:12:40] different tools, doing logins and trying to make it all work together.
[00:12:44] And what I think Practice Better does really well is integrations. We have integrations with every service you would need, like claim MD for insurance, billing Rupa for labs, that clean life for your nutrition planning, everything is right there for you. [00:13:00] So I think like choosing the solution that has everything in one place is going to save you a time in the long run.
[00:13:07] And then when it comes to AI. Just looking for an EHR that has that built in is important. Like I said, because EHRs are usually, they should be HIPAA compliant. And this is one thing that I think Practice Better does really well as [00:13:20] well. With the AI dictation, AI charting assistant, we even have AI built into our onboarding to make sure that when you join Practice Better, we can pull in all the information from your website to give you a faster onboarding experience.
[00:13:33] So yeah, it's, it's it's all there for you in one platform. And. Like I said, that alone is going to save you a [00:13:40] ton of time. Definitely, it makes the decision of which to use a lot easier and we're fans of practice better. Our clients use practice better. And I love that the integration is making it a clear choice because the last thing we want to do is piecemeal a lot of software programs.
[00:13:57] If we don't have to sometimes we have to. So, [00:14:00] thank you for sharing. Sorry, one other thing I want to add to that is piecemealing can you sometimes feel like you're saving money, but you're not when you're paying a little bit for a bunch of tools, you can actually save money by having it all in one. It's definitely a no brainer.
[00:14:14] We know AI is the future and using AI practice. It's gonna help you stay [00:14:20] relevant, save time and energy, and I think become a better clinician and practitioner, really, because it's gonna help you with your workflows. Anything else, Abigail, that we didn't cover in terms of, we talked a little bit about marketing examples and, and charting and, and EMRs.
[00:14:35] Is there anything else that you think would be helpful on this topic? I think we pretty much covered it. [00:14:40] I think like the charting, the note taking, the patient education and marketing. Those are the four big ways you can leverage AI to save a ton of time. And like I said, we're seeing our practitioners use it.
[00:14:51] We're seeing them complete their charts 50 percent faster, saving hours every month and freeing up more time to make more money. So the [00:15:00] data is there and it supports it. And it's just, it's really exciting to see what this can unlock for dietitians. Absolutely. And what would you like to promote? Where can people follow you, Abigail, and make sure that they are keeping up with you?
[00:15:13] Yeah. Best place to find me is actually LinkedIn. I know Instagram is where a lot of dietitians are hanging out. [00:15:20] I'm there, but I'm mostly on LinkedIn and that's where I'm the most active. So come find me on LinkedIn. It's Abigail Kiso. And then practice better. You can find us at practicebetter. io. Awesome.
[00:15:29] Thank you so much. It was a pleasure, Rabia. Looking for support to grow your dietician business or even get started? I invite you to join the library, our monthly affordable [00:15:40] membership that shows you exactly what to do every step of the way so that you can create the business of your dreams. Not sure if it's the right time?
[00:15:48] The membership gives you an option to Go at your own pace. We have modules, a roadmap to show you exactly what to do, and monthly live calls, as well as new content that we release every single month [00:16:00] based on requests. Inside of the library, we have four stages of business. So whether you come in getting started or you want to enter the membership and grow or scale your business, we have the appropriate resources for you and our team, including myself, available to answer your questions.
[00:16:15] Head on over to dietitianboston. com. Dot com and check out the library today. We'd love [00:16:20] to see you there.
