Tyler Kramer

When you wear medical devices, you start noticing other people wearing them too. Saw a guy at the gym with an insulin pump tube hanging out of his pocket and a Dexcom G7 on his arm, so I went over to show him mine. He had the older Tandem pump, the one I used to wear. Pulled out my Mobi, the smartphone controlled, screen-less version, about half the size. He had no idea it existed. He's a current Tandem Diabetes Care customer, already wearing the exact setup the upgrade requires, and he didn't know the upgrade was available to him. Going through this myself is how I learned the warranty upgrade rule: once a pump goes out of warranty, the opportunity window to upgrade with a low-cost or free replacement expires. So I told him to check his warranty date before it lapsed. He pulled out his phone right there and started calling the company to find out if he still qualified. He hadn't gotten a heads-up from them or his endocrinologist. Only caught my own upgrade window because I got lucky, and he should have gotten the same notice I did. The company has his profile, his serial number, his install date, and his warranty clock. Every signal needed to reach him at the right moment already exists. It just never reached him. So the customer most likely to say yes to an upgrade never hears about it. He found out from a stranger at the gym instead of the company he’d been loyal to for years. What does it cost a device company when the customer most ready to buy again is the last one it reaches?

I bought an annual supply of contact lenses because a rebate made it worth it. Functionally, this is buying a product online and it should take minutes. I paid about $1,050 out of pocket after my vision benefit. A $400 manufacturer rebate brought the real cost down to ~$650 for a full year of lenses plus the exam. Getting that $400 was another story. On June 22, the rebate portal filed my claim at $250, with no field to correct it. The missing $150 was a promo code my provider issued but the manufacturer's system wouldn't apply. Tracing it took four phone calls across three companies, each pointing to the next. On June 29, I mailed the itemized receipt, exactly as instructed. On August 11, an automated email said that receipt was never received, and denied the claim. Days later, they approved it. The digital rebate card arrived August 17. 64 days after I bought the product online. None of these companies were incompetent. The failure lived between the payer, provider, manufacturer, and processor, each running systems never built to talk to each other. Most people would have quit. And a rebate only costs the company money if you actually collect it. So the company that designs the process is the same one that profits when you give up on it. That's not a bug. That's the margin. People now expect the two-tap, real-time experience they get everywhere else, and the technology to deliver it in healthcare exists. The question is who fixes it first.

That is what stands out about Slackbot. You ask it something in natural language and it answers. It knows who you are, your role, and will work with you to complete tasks. No new system to learn, no prompt engineering, no ticket to IT. Someone in finance, ops, or support can get real value from it on day one.