Insurance giant Prudential is transforming its customers’ complex and fragmented health insurance experience with Google’s MedLM, a family of foundational models fine-tuned for healthcare industry use cases.
With this move, Prudential has adopted MedLM, which is commonly used by healthcare organizations to build AI applications that provide a better experience for healthcare professionals and patients, for claims processing and broader healthcare support. One of the first global insurance companies.
Initially rolled out in Singapore and Malaysia, MedLM analyzes medical reports, invoices and other claims documents and provides summaries and recommendations to claims adjusters to reduce manual data entry and minimize errors. Keep it to a minimum.
Prudential Health CEO Arjan Toll said early tests have shown impressive results, doubling the automation rate and improving accuracy of claims reviews and ratings. This will speed up payments to customers and allow Prudential to manage more claims, he added.
Tua also emphasized the importance of maintaining human oversight, saying the goal is not to completely replace claims adjusters, but to provide them with tools and information to make faster and more accurate decisions. He pointed out that doing so would give authority to insurance claims adjusters.
Beyond claims processing, Toor envisions a future where AI plays a more important role in personalizing healthcare. “Our idea is not to create some generic solution that works for everyone. The key is to understand how to make (healthcare) relevant and personalized based on the specific needs of specific customers. It’s about whether you can do it.”
Grace Park, chief data, analytics and AI officer at Prudential, discussed the broad strategic value of data and AI to improve customer and agent experiences, improve access to care, and improve customer and agent experiences. He pointed to the role of data and AI in strengthening the company’s resilience.
She highlighted Prudential’s newly established AI Lab. This is a joint initiative with Google Cloud, providing a platform for the company’s 15,000 employees to contribute ideas and experiment with AI applications. This helps democratize access to AI and foster a culture of innovation within your organization.
Park emphasized the importance of prioritizing relevant data, integrating internal and external data sources, and ultimately building the right platform to deliver personalized services. She also detailed Prudential’s efforts to progressively upskill employees, starting with leadership and extending to other employees, so everyone can understand and effectively utilize AI tools.
Regarding concerns about data privacy and security in AI, particularly in sensitive areas such as healthcare and finance, Park said, “We manage every process step-by-step to ensure that AI solutions are properly security-enabled before they go to market.” We will make sure that all relevant parties are involved.” This, combined with one-way data sharing from Google to Prudential, ensures that customer data is treated responsibly and securely.
Looking to the future, Prudential plans to expand the use of MedLM and other AI technologies into other areas of its health business. The company leverages data and AI to connect the dots between patients, providers, and payers, ultimately creating a more efficient, patient-centric healthcare ecosystem and helping improve health outcomes for its customers. I envision a future where I can play a more active role.
“This is the first step in using generative AI to deliver a seamless, digitally enabled healthcare experience at every step of our customers’ health journey, from the point of diagnosis to treatment, recovery and prevention. “It’s not a big deal,” Toll said.
