Disclaimer: The opinions represented here are those of the individual and do not necessarily represent those of their employer.
77% of adults over 50 say they’d prefer to age in place, and with good reason: Growing older in your own home can have a host of health benefits. But aging in place isn’t as simple as it sounds, and seniors need a lot of support to live with dignity. To meet those challenges, many caregivers are joining the two-thirds of physicians who used artificial intelligence (AI) in 2024, leveraging technology that is rapidly reshaping the landscape of healthcare delivery.
At the forefront of this evolution is Mark Francis, Chief Product Officer at Electronic Caregiver, a digital health company specializing in remote and home-based care. With a background spanning aging services policy, product innovation at Intel and AWS, and nearly five years at Electronic Caregiver, Mark brings a unique lens to AI’s real-world impact in healthcare.
In a wide-ranging conversation with C8 Health CEO Galia Schwarz, Mark shared practical insights on how AI can enhance care, streamline clinician workflows, and support aging-in-place strategies. His team’s work illustrates how AI is best used not to replace clinicians, but to empower them with timely, actionable information.
Watch the full interview below, or read on for a selection of key takeaways.
Clinicians are increasingly drowning in data. From EHRs to remote monitoring tools, there’s no shortage of numbers, readings, and notes — yet sifting through that flood to find what’s truly urgent remains a major challenge. Mark believes this is where AI can make its most meaningful impact: not by generating more information, but by analyzing it to deliver the right insight at the right time.
A powerful example came from a 67-year-old woman living alone in rural Oregon. Electronic Caregiver equipped her home with ambient sensors and a virtual AI caregiver named Addison. Over time, the AI noticed a subtle change: her movement patterns had decreased, and visits to the kitchen dropped sharply over two days. Though her vitals looked fine, this deviation from her normal behavior triggered an alert.
When a staff member followed up, they found the patient confused and dehydrated — something that likely wouldn’t have been flagged through traditional metrics alone. Thanks to the early warning, her daughter was able to intervene, rehydrate her, and help her restock groceries — potentially preventing a serious fall or hospitalization.
“Even though her vital signs were OK — by all clinical measures, things were OK — the activity monitoring and that ambient sensing was able to identify a change in norm. Our clinical team was able to identify that there was some confusion there and then we were able to get a caregiver to go and intervene, which was great.
As a result, we probably headed off at a minimum a high likelihood of having a fall. And somebody who's nearly 70, if they fall and they're at home alone, that can be catastrophic.”
This story illustrates a core truth: in an environment of information overload, more data isn’t helpful unless it’s actionable. Effective AI doesn’t just measure — it contextualizes. It takes in all the data, finds what matters, and serves it to caregivers at the appropriate time.
This is precisely the role C8 Health was built to fulfill. By integrating AI-powered tools directly into clinical workflows, C8 surfaces just-in-time knowledge, streamlines administrative burdens, and delivers insights where and when they’re needed most. In a healthcare system overwhelmed by information, C8 helps transform data into meaningful, real-world decisions that enhance care and protect patients.
To learn more, watch our webinar on Bridging Knowledge Gaps in Hospitals, featuring speakers from the George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Nearly half of all physicians exhibit symptoms of burnout. Mark believes AI can directly address this issue by shouldering the most time-consuming, repetitive tasks. In the process, it can serve as a supportive partner to human caregivers — not a replacement.
Over a fifth of all physicians spend more than eight hours a week in their electronic health records (EHR) system. This eats away at their work-life balance, putting them at greater risk of burnout. AI solutions such as ambient scribes can slash those numbers, updating charts and summarizing notes without the need for physician input.
“I think a great use case is how ambient scribes have come to be. Anything that can get a clinician in a doctor-patient meeting from behind a keyboard to sitting next to and being able to talk to and listen to a patient is gold. And the rise of ambient scribes that can be in the background listening, taking notes, summarizing the notes and making those notes actionable to a clinician in that environment is a great use case.”
Mark has first-hand experience with how AI can speed up administrative work. He and his team at Electronic Caregiver created an AI-powered quality assurance (QA) agent to help their nurses audit patient calls. In the process, they brought audit times down from an hour to five minutes. That freed the nurses to do what only they can: care for patients.
“We developed a virtual QA agent with our nurses to make sure it was addressing what they needed. It was an iterative process. And through that, something that was taking an hour of someone's time is now taking five minutes. So that work, that burden has been removed. And now what we're able to do is audit 100% of the calls at one-fiftieth of the cost and one-twentieth of the time burden that it had on our nurses.”
By targeting behind-the-scenes work that contributes to burnout, AI can give back valuable hours to clinicians, improving both job satisfaction and care quality.
Mark stressed that AI tools must be developed not just for clinicians, but with them. Too often, health technology fails because it asks users to change how they work, rather than supporting their existing workflows. To make sure its tools actually helped clinicians, Electronic Caregiver sought input from those on the front line.
“We sat down with the clinical and the non-clinical staff to say, ‘Here are the tools. Here's the type of reports we could generate. Here's what we think is good. What is most valuable to you? And based upon what's most valuable to you, how and where do you want to consume these?’
And we're really clear asking for what people wanted, but also we explicitly said, ‘What do you not want? What is not actionable and valuable to you?’”
Even when the tools are right, clinicians and IT teams need support to realize their full potential. Mark and his team made sure that their partners understood the system, and then continued to collect their feedback. Those steps have helped to drive results — and adoption.
“We involve them not just in the development of the tool and the reports, but also in terms of the upskilling of the teams so that they could use and access this information directly themselves. And then we made sure we had and continue to have a continuous feedback process to be able to improve and enhance those tools.”
Through candid collaboration, clinicians, IT teams, and developers can achieve all the efficiency benefits that AI has to offer.
Mark’s insights show the incredible potential for AI in healthcare, whether it’s turning info into insights or returning precious time for clinicians and their patients. For more insights from Mark, check out his LinkedIn profile or visit Electronic Caregiver’s site.
In a field where both time and trust are precious, AI must do more than analyze. It must understand, adapt, and ultimately support the human relationships at the heart of healing. With C8 Health’s Knowledge Management Platform, providers get that support on-demand. That leads to smarter decisions, better care, and healthier patients. To learn more, get in touch today.