Weave Acquires TrueLark as Healthcare Front Desks Answer AI’s Call

Much of the white space opportunity in healthcare innovation can be found reshaping how small and mid-sized healthcare practices engage with patients.

Healthcare’s front office is often where patient friction begins: an outdated bottleneck in an age of instant digital communication.

It’s against this backdrop where Weave, a customer experience and payments software platform, on Monday (May 5) announced its acquisition of TrueLark, a conversational artificial intelligence (AI) company specializing in automating front-office interactions.

Marcus Bertilson, COO at Weave, told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster in an exclusive discussion that the aim of the acquisition is to create an intelligent operating system that modernizes and humanizes how practices manage everything from scheduling to communication.

“The experience of engaging or scheduling or rebooking or getting answers to your questions from your healthcare practice … is not very modern,” Bertilson said. “The consumer expects immediate answers, but you have to usually wait online.”

Surprisingly, the innovation Weave and TrueLark are bringing to healthcare doesn’t start in an app or portal. It starts with the most traditional tech of all: the phone.

“It’s interesting that Weave as a platform is using the phone as the cornerstone for all of the innovation,” Webster noted. “Many of these innovations start with digital … but it’s really the phone that you’ve established as the connection.”

Bertilson agreed, noting that by relying on the phone, communication remains seamless and familiar for both patients and staff.

“The unique value proposition of Weave is it all comes from that trusted practice number,” he said.

From automating appointment scheduling to streamlining payments, AI is poised to bring unprecedented efficiency to healthcare front offices. But the tech-driven revolution in healthcare is about more than just speed. It’s about improving patient satisfaction, reducing staff burnout, and enabling providers to focus more on care and less on paperwork.

This is where TrueLark enters the picture. With conversational AI capabilities, the platform allows patients to interact with their practice at any time — rebooking, scheduling or initiating communication without waiting on hold or filling out a clipboard.

“It’s a major step for the patient experience that honestly deserves this type of innovation. And it’s been a long time coming,” Bertilson said.

AI-powered solutions like chatbots, virtual assistants and predictive scheduling algorithms are now the first touchpoints for many patients. These tools can handle a wide array of administrative tasks: answering frequently asked questions, reminding patients about upcoming appointments, and even rescheduling visits based on real-time availability.

But the benefits are twofold: while patients enjoy convenience, practice staff get relief from the operational chaos that typically awaits them on a Monday morning.

“I typically give the example of when the staff comes back after the weekend, they usually have an absolutely full voicemail or inbox to get through,” Bertilson said. “With TrueLark … they’ll come back with maybe just a handful of cases that they have to weigh in on. The rest was handled intelligently and in a trusted way.”

Rather than replacing staff, Bertilson sees AI as augmenting them. And while enterprise dental service organizations (DSOs) can use the AI for scalable efficiency across multiple locations, Bertilson is quick to note the value for a solo front-desk worker managing a single-office practice.

“We believe this is really augmenting and giving the staff a superpower,” he said. “Staffing is one of their trickiest things — not just to train, but they get bogged down by these very mundane tasks.”

As the conversation moved to a close, Webster raised a thoughtful question: When will AI no longer be marketed as AI, but simply how modern software works?

Bertilson agreed. “Everyone is trying to sift through just the flashy demos versus the things that practically work,” he said. “TrueLark … quietly built something long before everyone called it AI. They almost reluctantly started calling it AI.”

“In the future, the future of a healthcare practice — this is just embedded,” Bertilson added. “Anyone who asks you to call in and wait online … will just fall behind.”

It’s the Amazon-effect for healthcare communication. Once patients experience the speed, simplicity and reliability of an AI-powered front office, it becomes the new expectation.

The post Weave Acquires TrueLark as Healthcare Front Desks Answer AI’s Call appeared first on PYMNTS.com.