Striking a Chord: Anthem Helps Patients Navigate Healthcare with Ease

by Allison Toh

AI is bringing convenience to your healthcare experience.

Health insurance company Anthem helps patients personalize and better understand their healthcare information through AI.

Operating in 14 states with more than 40 million members on its health plans, Anthem is developing into “AI and digital-first company” to better assist their customers.

“We have to acknowledge that our legacy has been that we’re an insurance company, and we’re quite good at it,” said Rajeev Ronanki, senior vice president and chief digital officer at Anthem, in a conversation with AI Podcast host Noah Kravitz. “But more and more the world is evolving to where insurance is really about data. And to make data meaningful and useful, we need AI, hence the transformation.”

Ronanki believes that “digital data and AI are the bridge” to solving the issues in the healthcare industry, and that, in the future, the medical field will employ a variety of AI-assisted tools to augment patient care.

“Almost no one gives the U.S. healthcare system high marks,” Ronanki said. “Hard to use, hard to understand, it’s too expensive — the system is just broken.”

“If we can think of healthcare as a supply and demand problem, and systematically digitize all the supply points so your doctors’ offices, hospitals, retail, clinics … and make all of that supply available in a consistent and systematic manner to the demand of the patients, then we can thrive.”

Acknowledging the concerns over data privacy, Ronanki stressed Anthem’s mission for patients to have greater transparency into and full control over their own entire health history.

“That’s the paradigm shift that we want to make,” said Ronanki. “Which is to liberate data from all the places that it exists today, and make it available to consumers and let them make the choice and to who to make that data available to.”

Later this fall, Anthem plans to launch their AI-powered product that gives users the opportunity to diagnose themselves, schedule video consultations and book doctors’ appointments all with a few clicks of a button.

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