Nurse-Turned-Entrepreneur Uses AI to Help Underserved Communities
This week on How Success Happens, I spoke with Kwamane Liddell, the founder behind ThriveLink, a platform that uses AI to help families access programs like health insurance, food stamps and utility assistance. Having started his career in healthcare as a nurse, Liddell’s unique insights into the needs of underserved communities inspired him to create solutions that bridge the gap between healthcare accessibility and social determinants of health.
You can listen to our full conversation above, and below, I’ve pulled out three key takeaways. I hope you find as much inspiration in Liddell’s journey as I did.
Transforming personal experience into advocacy
Liddell shares how witnessing health disparities led him to deeply understand public health issues. His connection to healthcare inequities led him to innovate and advocate for underserved communities.
“I was a nursing manager at Alameda Health System, and I had seen so many patients who lost their lives of well-being, not because they needed more healthcare,” he says. “We lowered their blood pressure or helped them control their diabetes. That’s easy. But they needed to be able to afford the medication when they left or have access to the healthy food and housing and all those things.”
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The impact of ThriveLink
Liddell recounted a powerful story of a patient who benefited immensely from ThriveLink’s services, illustrating the profound impact that accessible healthcare resources can have on individuals and communities.
“When we were doing our first pilot with Atrium Health in North Carolina, [a] patient went into the doctor’s office, and she had very serious clinical needs. But part of the thing she was really worried about was her utility bill,” Liddell says. “She didn’t have the money to pay it. And during the pilot, the doctor just gave her ThriveLink’s phone number. And without any additional work from the doctor or the team, she was enrolled. She called the number and enrolled her into her local utility assistance program, which she didn’t know existed, and it paid her $519 utility bill.”
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AI-powered healthcare
Liddell shares how AI can drastically reduce costs and expand service capabilities in community clinics across America, enabling ThriveLink to provide essential support to patients efficiently.
“At ThriveLink, we build telephonic AI bots that talk to patients and enable them to verbally enroll into things like food stamps, utility assistance and even Medicaid without any Internet or phone number necessary,” Liddell says. “With AI, we can make it affordable for every community clinic in America to be able to support patients and sign them up like never before. And that’s really our focus: making tools. We’re going to continue making tools in healthcare and beyond.”
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