The Human Touch
Ensuring the advice we give our clients is factual and accurate is Woodsides’ top priority. Also equally, if not more important, is that our communications respect our client’s privacy and confidentiality. This is why I want to discuss two VERY important topics with you.
1. When you speak with Woodside, you are speaking with a living human being.
2. Woodside is implementing new communication protocols that are HIPAA compliant.
Let’s discuss the “living human being” aspect. AI is increasingly making its way into your healthcare. Whether it is the AI listening device fast replacing your medical transcriptionist in your doctor’s office – or AI chat bots offering you medical and insurance advice. AI tools have their place in today’s economy, but when it comes to the medical field proceed with caution. I recently read an AP article that highlights the issues AI in healthcare presents.
The article explains that AI chatbots like ChatGPT Health and Anthropic’s Claude are increasingly being used to give health advice by summarizing medical records, interpreting test results, and spotting health trends. However, experts warn they shouldn’t replace professional medical care because they can misinterpret information and aren’t regulated like medical providers. Privacy is another concern, since chatbots aren’t covered by HIPAA and sensitive data may not be fully protected. Users are urged to be cautious, provide detailed queries, and not rely on them for serious or emergency health decisions.
At Woodside we trust humans more than AI. That is why any advice we share is thoughtfully and painstakingly researched to confirm its authenticity. And we have no plans to hand off our interaction with our clients to AI chatbots. When you contact Woodside either by phone, text, or email – rest assured a REAL human is replying.
This brings me to point #2. Woodside is excited to announce that we are switching our emails over to a new extension “@woodsidefinancialservices.com”. We did the paperwork to make these new email extensions HIPAA compliant and more secure. Our previous emails were both HIPAA compliant and secure too, however the industry as a whole is moving away from “@gmail.com” email extensions for increased security reasons.
In conclusion, this isn’t a dig on AI. Rather we just realize some things are best handled with humanity at the core – your healthcare being one of those things.
