What it really takes to scale AI to deliver a digital-first experience

As the SVP & CTO at Anthem, Inc., Anil Bhatt has the responsibility of bringing together Anthem’s engagement experience and technology strategy. He has been leading the charge on building a digital-first, technology-led and human-centered design culture through the following five pillars:

? Create exceptional, personalized and relevant experiences

? Continue to mature the platform business

? Define the destination technology roadmap in partnership w/ the business & digital

? Accelerate to become a cloud-enabled enterprise

? Ensure the technology architecture is future proof

We had the wonderful pleasure of hosting Anil at our THINK 2021 conference recently. Full replay available here (plus other THINK 2021 client highlights w/ free registration)

IBM and Anthem have partnered across multiple exponential technologies like AI, Machine Learning, and NLP to offer all constituents a connected experience. This unified ecosystem enables Anthem to serve stakeholders like providers, care networks, brokers, and employers, while focusing on consumers’ health in a holistic way. It also allows Anthem to sure the associate experience is improved as they help members and all the constituents. With over 80M member data, Anthem has built one tof the largest datasets in the healthcare industry, growing by petabytes every month, and keeping the privacy and security of data paramount. The singular focus is to create a deep understanding about the member across every touchpoint, so Anthem can leverage that data-driven insight to tailor and personalize experiences, transform the business to be more efficient and predictive, and help consumers improve their health and wellbeing.

“IBM and Anthem have collectively done great work with conversational AI and digital messaging” - Anil

Sydney is Anthem's flagship mobile experience which serves as a gateway to Anthem’s ecosystem for members. It not only drives a personalized experience, but also makes that experience available where and when a consumer needs it. It has won multiple awards (Stevie, Ava, Mobile Star etc.) and quickly become the front door engagement platform to bring to life all the connected experiences Anthem is building. 

Sydney's conversational AI virtual agent is powered by IBM Watson Assistant, and co-created in a strong partnership between Anthem and IBM's AI Services. Today, Sydney confidently answers complex healthcare questions like: How much of my claim payment is remaining? How do I pay my claim? What is my benefit coverage? What's covered in-network? What is my co-pay? etc. Sydney is continuing to help members as a health partner answering questions like: What is healthy for me to eat today? By embedding AI and computer vision within Sydney, members can even take a photo of their lunch and know the calorie count. I encourage you to download Sydney Health here: Apple app store, Google play store.

Conversational AI in healthcare is extremely complex with a multitude of variations between benefits by plan type, place and type of service, individual/family deductible, CPT code variations etc. In addition, Anthem like most clients has to coordinate Data and AI securely across a hybrid cloud (AWS, IBM Private & Public Cloud, on-prem etc). IBM helped accelerate Anthem's time to value with its IBM Services AI Development toolkit that comprises:

• IBM Healthcare workflow & benefits engine that helps map, parse and orchestrate through granular healthcare data on member, plan, benefits, etc.
• Advanced Conversational AI Asset which seamlessly orchestrates sessions, APIs, data etc. for an intelligent virtual agent
• Conversational Insights for continuous AI improvement and longitudinal analysis of a member journey as they interact with AI and human SMEs

Every year Anthem gets 46M+ calls from members and providers to address their healthcare needs. Anthem and IBM partnered to enable digital messaging with LivePerson, Twilio and conversational AI with IBM Watson Assistant to deliver instant responses anytime anywhere. While delivering a better human centered experience, AI is also operationally a lot more efficient. Transitioning calls to AI over digital messaging can make delivering services much more efficient and affordable.

Rajeev Ronanki, Anthem's Chief Digital Officer recently hosted Arvind Krishna, IBM's Chairman & CEO at ThinkAnthem (replay here). 

"In 2020, 5M calls that would have otherwise reached the call center were resolved via messaging and AI. It's more convenient and often times the customer satisfaction is higher." - Rajeev

It's been an absolute pleasure leading the AI augmented Service Experience partnership with our Anthem colleagues. Big shout out to Kumar Gudavalli, Geeta Wilson, Atul Gupta, Ajoy Ranga, Kim Rival, Sangeeta Dutta, Jeff Van Ornum, Terrance Holbrook and the entire Anthem family. Cheers to the IBM AI Avengers Glenn Finch, John Tarcson, Ambhi Ganesan, Vineet Kaushik, Michael Choie, Suchetan Bhattacharya and the entire IBM family.