The Healthcare landscape is always a dynamic and ever-evolving industry, and with technological innovations coming in, this is increasing at a rapid pace. Over the last five years, everything from regulations, diseases, and treatments has had a complete turnaround. With these changes in place, one crucial factor comes into the picture- Health insurance and technology need to team up in a more solid collaboration to change the narrative of healthcare.   

For instance, diseases have significantly shifted from communicable to lifestyle-driven chronic disorders, along with some grave issues such as fragmented services, varied and inefficient payment models, and more. Amid these critical healthcare challenges, what can health insurers do to make healthcare accessible?  

Keep reading to decode!  

The Digital Imperative  

Can you imagine meteorologists and health insurers in the same landscape? Well, it’s time to reflect this imagination on reality. Today, health insurers must make predictions and especially educated guesses that include everything, including available data, current trends, and modelling projections. In Health Insurance, one new inevitability encompasses most of the projections, which include the digitization of medicine and, by extension, healthcare.   

Here, “Digital” essentially refers to the broad range of technologies and the applications which are enabling efficient automation of many aspects of care and administration, better decision-making, stronger connectivity with more informed customers and also more advanced data-driven innovations. Some of these include- telemedicine, wearables/wellness apps, big data, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, followed by digital treatments.   

The Digital imperative is taking the healthcare industry to the next level. While technology upgrades are changing the traditional healthcare industry, the health insurers operating traditional systems can experience a downfall.  

Why Traditional Models No Longer Scale    

Can you imagine the efforts that a Health insurer has to make in an age where health insurance policies have become digital? It is quite a lot. The legacy workflows, which include paper-based forms, manual underwriting, and fragmented claims handling, all struggle to keep pace with the modern demands. The delays, errors, and silos essentially undermine both efficiency and customer trust.  

In a recent survey by Deloitte, assessing about 93 insurers across 16 markets, it was concluded that digital engagement is now a core business imperative. This widespread has highlighted a shift which highlights that the traditional models just do not scale in a fast-moving, digitally connected market.   

The Role of Health Insurance Tech- Solving Problems with Precision  

This is exactly where health insurance technology comes into the picture. With traditional models becoming obsolete, a blend of AI, analytics, cloud infrastructure, and automated workflows- these technologies are designed to make operations more intelligent, reliable and scalable.   

With 76% of insurance organisations already implementing Gen-AI in their operations, the speed at which AI is becoming a crucial part of insurer operations is undeniable. AI does not have hypothetical benefits; instead, it empowers the insurers to offer measurable outcomes that prove that tech can strengthen risk assessment, claims handling, and policy servicing for Health insurance companies in real-world conditions.    

Online Health Insurance Applications: Meeting Customers Where They Are   

With the customer expectations shifting to digital insurance, the journey of purchasing a Health insurance policy starts with online Health insurance applications. The focus on purchasing insurance policies from digital channels has been rising significantly, and this trend shift shows that online applications aren’t just convenient. Instead, they are quickly becoming the norm. As for insurers, they represent a frictionless path for policy issuance, making it easier for customers to onboard, and also a broader market reach.  

What to Expect?

 The shift towards online health insurance applications is quite exciting; however, the goal of health care digitalization may seem quite clear, but the path remains quite cloudy. Additionally, changing the industry essentially requires changing established behaviors for both patients and healthcare providers. By transforming the existing, entrenched business models, the insurers can save a significant amount of time, as these essentially depend on paper for transactions and recordkeeping.   

Here, all aspects of Health Insurance’s existing business model will be impacted by the expediting role of digital transformation. This includes everything from Distribution to the way insurers interact with the customers. While the road to smartly leveraging technology might not be easy, as the market is already packed with 160,000+ health apps, the smarter strategy for the insurers would be to understand the business relevance of technology in process-specific functions and leverage it accordingly.   

Conclusion  

 With the digitization measures changing, effective strategizing will play a key role in seamlessly adopting a smart digital imperative in operations. It’s time that Health insurers understood that past growth will no longer determine future growth, and it’s time for Health insurers to make educated guesses and place informed bets before arriving.