AI And The Pursuit Of Personalized Healthcare Customer Service

The progress of AI in the last decade has opened many doors in the technological world. Now it’s beginning to enter the healthcare industry even more dominantly with the announcement of a team-up between Humana and IBM Watson Health.

Humana has recently released that they will be revamping their customer service and care management platforms. Implementing IBM Watson Health’s AI technology, this software will now offer a virtual assistant that will help customers with benefit information, service costs, and link people with personalized healthcare professionals for their needs. The AI Assistant will be directly connected to the IBM Watson Health cloud, which will also store all of the acquired data to broaden and enhance the AI over time.

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This technology is set to further improve the accessibility of Humana’s services. Customers and practitioners alike will be able to exchange case information more fluidly and avoid filing or consistency errors. The virtual assistant also has the logic processing capabilities to carry out healthcare-related conversations with customers, which will help personalize individual experiences, while eliminating the need for additional manpower to assist thousands of people at once.

One of the particularly innovative features of this new software is its cost efficiency programming, which will enable customers to get more accurate and up-to-date information on how much their procedures, prescriptions, and visits will cost before going to the doctor. The software will analyze information from historical claims and provider data in order to present personalized healthcare cost projections to customers.

Data cloud storage and AI utilization are some of the first major ways that the healthcare industry is digitizing. Providence St. Joseph Health is another example of this, recently shifting to Microsoft’s cloud and AI intelligence. The company’s executives found it successful enough to potentially bridge the gap in fractured information and IT in the healthcare marketplace.

In the case of Humana, being the 4th largest private health insurance provider nationally, their shift to AI could set the example the industry needs to make a more rapid transition into this style of data management and customer service. This potential shift could not only be a welcomed source of organization for hospitals all over the country, but a new way to access statistical resources that can give a clarified view of how to provide the best customer service on a much larger scale.