Patty Hayward is the General Manager of Healthcare and Life Sciences at Talkdesk, where she leads innovation at the intersection of AI, technology, and patient experience for healthcare organizations.

Key Takeaways

• Deep Personal Motivation: Patty’s passion for patient experience stems from her family’s struggle navigating complex healthcare for her mother. This drives her mission to simplify and humanize patient journeys.
• Transforming Contact Centers: Talkdesk is applying AI to rethink traditional healthcare contact centers. By integrating electronic health records, smart routing, and agent assist tools, they aim to ensure every patient feels known, supported, and guided from their first call.
• Empowering Agents: The goal is to upskill contact center agents-reducing time-to-proficiency, increasing job satisfaction, and creating healthcare career growth. AI handles routine queries, while agents focus on complex, human-centered needs.
• AI for Patient Experience: Patty draws compelling analogies to Amazon and Delta, envisioning healthcare systems that anticipate patient needs and minimize frustration. She argues that a truly great patient experience requires patients never have to repeat themselves.
• Critical AI Adoption Considerations: The democratization of AI (especially LLMs) is making advanced solutions accessible to organizations without deep IT resources. Yet, Patty stresses the importance of rethinking processes-“don’t automate a bad process”-and keeping trust, privacy, and clinical care at the forefront.
• Balancing Innovation and Trust: Patty acknowledges that while rapid AI adoption is exciting, healthcare’s primary goal is always quality clinical care. Any patient engagement technology must build trust, ensure safety, and ultimately improve-not complicate-outcomes.

About Patty Hayward

Patty Hayward, GM of healthcare and life sciences at Talkdesk, has over a quarter century of industry strategy experience, including at organizations such as McKesson, Medicity, and Humedica. She is an expert in HIE, population health, pharmacy, process redesign for healthcare systems, and increasing access to patient information.

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