On November 2, Calico Care CEO Stephan Habermeyer will present at the TCT 2026 AI Lab on how a conversational AI layer can close the silent gaps between clinical trial visits, by reaching out to patients instead of waiting for them to report in.
4-minute read
On November 2, our CEO Stephan Habermeyer presents at the TCT 2026 AI Lab in San Diego. Here’s the idea he’s bringing.
Our Co-Founder and CEO, Stephan Habermeyer, will present A Conversational AI Engagement Layer for Patient Follow-Up at TCT 2026, the Cardiovascular Research Foundation’s flagship meeting for interventional cardiovascular medicine. His talk is part of Real World Applications of AI: AI-Powered Clinical Trials in the new TCT AI Lab.
When: Monday, November 2, at 10:17 AM PT, during the session that runs 9:40–10:40 AM
Where: TCT AI Lab, San Diego Convention Center
Here’s why the topic matters so much to us.
The silence between visits
A patient leaves the cath lab with a new valve and a follow-up schedule. Thirty days, six months, one year, then once a year for as long as the trial runs. On paper, that’s a thorough record. In reality, it’s a handful of snapshots with long stretches of silence in between.
What happens in those stretches is usually what matters most. The breathlessness that crept in over a few weeks. The dizzy spell they decided wasn’t worth mentioning. The medication they quietly stopped taking. By the next visit, these become vague recollections: “I think it started in the spring?” Sometimes the patient doesn’t come back at all.
Most trial follow-up waits for the patient to act. Fill out the diary. Log in to the portal. Call the site if something changes. But many people in cardiovascular device trials are older adults living with several conditions. Many aren’t comfortable with apps, and many don’t want to bother anyone. A system that waits for them to reach out will mostly hear from the patients who need it least.
Site teams know this, which is why so much coordinator time goes to phone tag and chasing missing data. It’s important work, but it doesn’t scale.
Our approach: change who starts the conversation
Cali is our AI care assistant. Instead of waiting for patients to report in, Cali reaches out to them. Here’s how it works.
Cali calls on your schedule. The study team sets the cadence, and Cali places an ordinary phone call. No app, no smartphone, no login, in more than 100 languages.
It feels like a check-in. Cali asks about symptoms, medications, mood and daily life in natural conversation, and follows up when something sounds different: “Hi Margaret, how have you been feeling since we last spoke?”
“Not my best. I’ve been more out of breath than usual.”
“Thanks for telling me. Has anything else changed lately?”Every call becomes structured data. Responses are logged, timestamped and tracked over time in one dashboard. No manual entry, no chasing notes.
Concerns go to the right person right away. If something needs attention, Cali flags it and sends it to the site team the same day, not at the next visit.
What Cali doesn’t do
AI in clinical research deserves a high bar, so we’re clear about where Cali stops.
Cali makes no clinical decisions. Investigators and coordinators decide what a flag means and what happens next.
Every interaction can be audited.
Patient data is never used to train AI models.
It is HIPAA compliant and SOC Type II.
Cali isn’t there to replace coordinators. It handles the routine contact at scale so that coordinators’ time goes to the conversations only a person should have.
Why it matters for the evidence
Trials exist to produce evidence we can trust, and that evidence is only as good as the follow-up behind it. Every participant lost to follow-up weakens long-term data. Every adverse event caught late adds noise where clarity is needed. In structural heart and other device trials, durability questions play out over years. The time between visits is where the real story unfolds, and it’s the part we’ve been least able to see.
Come say hello
If you’re running cardiovascular trials, managing post-procedure follow-up, or thinking about how AI fits into clinical research, join us in the AI Lab on Monday morning. You can also book time with our team or email info@calico.care.
The best follow-up systems won’t ask patients to remember more. They’ll be the ones that never stop listening.
Session times are subject to change; check the TCT program for the latest.
