‘AI is a vital part of the fourth industrial revolution and will impact every aspect of people’s life’- Fei Fei Li, Professor at Stanford University.
Artificial Intelligence has been one of the most reformative technological inventions in the history of humankind as it has made information systems more adaptive for humans. Over the years, AI has played a definitive role in redefining different industry sectors & sections and the insurance sector in this context has a similar story as well.
We need no superlative analysis to understand the importance of medical insurance, especially in the present turbulent times of the global pandemic. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) have proved to be a vital cog that has streamlined end-to-end claim settlement, thereby increasing customer satisfaction. The mediclaim management process can now be done faster and better with fewer or no errors.
Gartner, in 2016, predicted that almost 1/3rd of the companies on a global level would use AI in at least one aspect of their sales process by 2020. ML and AI have left no stone unturned and brought a paradigm shift in different industries such as healthcare, aviation, ecommerce, and the insurance sector.
A brief understanding of mediclaim settlement
In the realm of the insurance sector, mediclaim settlement means an agreement form between two different parties which allows the smooth handling of the health insurance disputes. The process of mediclaim settlement begins when a policyholder asks his/her insurer to avail the medical services covered in the policy. With the benefits mentioned in the policy, the policyholder can either get a cashless treatment or get a reimbursement for availed health services.
In mediclaim settlement, the insurance company then reviews the claim. The insurance company matches the claim with their record in the claim management software to see if the claim is genuine or malicious. Moreover, there have been cases where the mediclaim insurance companies have instigated investigative operations to find the genuineness of the claim done by the policyholder. AI has been a breath of fresh air for the healthcare insurers as it allows them to manage claim settlements better. Here is how it is done:
- AI can predict the pattern of the claim volume so that the insurers can make themselves prepared.
- Through in-depth data analytics, insurers can automate the process of fraud detection.
- It helps them to pre-assess the claims while simultaneously automating the damage evaluation process.
After understanding the changes in brief that Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) has brought in the insurance sector, we now dig deep to see the role these two techniques play.
Role of AI and ML in the health insurance sector
The expansion of AI and ML in different industry sectors, especially in the last decade or so has opened new avenues for the insurance industry and has allowed the insurers to provide a better customer experience. The insurance sector has been marred by three major issues that are proving to be a hurdle for the insurance personnel to deliver a quality customer experience. They are:
- Not reaching to their targeted customers at the right time
- Not providing right products according to the requirement of the customer
- Not giving on-time claim to their customers and failing to find the spurious claims
Artificial Intelligence can streamline the redundant processes that creep-in into the medical insurance system and create confusion among the employees. In a typical mediclaim insurance firm, the team consists of agents, brokers, claim investigators, etc. A technologically advanced system like healthcare insurance software consisting of AI and ML will help keep the work in order and increase the efficiency of the employees.
AI-powered solutions help in simplifying the kerfuffle and enable the mediclaim insurers provide more value propositions to the customers
AI can be the catalyst for faster healthcare insurance claims
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A few unique steps in the AI-enabled insurance work process would help the customers complete the mediclaim settlement work swiftly.
Analysis of the information provided
The below mentioned information/data is first drawn out from the medical document to kick-start the process of healthcare insurance claim settlement through AI
- Necessary information like the diagnosis report of the customer, severity and type of disease, etc. is first extracted from the document in a textual format.
- Following this, information about CPT (Current Procedural Terminology) codes- the service or procedures performed on the patients are also extracted.
The importance of both the systems mentioned above is that the first one is necessary to process the information and the second one looks at the authenticity of the information.
Fraud Analyzer
Insurance companies lose a significant amount of money to fraudulent claims; nevertheless, such a problem can be rectified with cognitive Artificial Intelligence technology.
When an AI-powered system analyzes several symptoms and diagnoses, it can come up with a tentative treatment for the disease. This treatment will enable the insurers to gauge a tentative cost of the disease, based on different factors like the severity of the disease, location of the hospital, etc.
So when a customer files for an insurance claim, the insurance provider can refer to their data and save themselves from future mishaps.
Processing the medical invoices
With the help of AI, the medical invoices can be automated, ruling out the chances of human intervention. It is a four-step process as mentioned below.
- Bounding boxes around the medical invoice text
- The boxes then go through a scene text decoder which uses a sequence neural network.
- LDC (Levenshtein Distance Correction) is applied to the localized boxes for better accuracy
- Each line item is then put in a specific insurer category.
AI consists of algorithms responsible for making a decision or a prediction about the next required tasks.
The data is analyzed by those algorithms, and as a result, it is represented by the proper and quick decisions.
DEEP LEARNING AND MACHINE LEARNING: EXPLAINING THE TERMINOLOGY
What do we mean under the term AI today
It is known that Artificial Intelligence is the set of algorithms that include just code and math and their task is to make the decision concerning the data.
So AI is the general term that can be used for any program that can perform smartly.
Check Alia Malhotra Reddit profile and come to know what I posted on reddit about artificial intelligence, machine learning, technology and many more.
Like every other industry, data has also been the core of the insurance industry.
Over the due course of time, what actually has changed is the amount of data and the speed at which machines are processing it for driving useful insights.
Data-driven insights play a vital role in boosting this industry by making decisions based on facts, figures, and user patterns.
Insurance providers adopt Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML) technologies to enhance the end-user experience, develop improved solutions for increasing operational efficiency, and build accurate underwriting models.Machine Learning is an application of Artificial Intelligence technology that allows computer systems to deploy algorithms for learning and improving my experience.
Such algorithms are used for building mathematical models which can be used as training data, allowing systems to make decisions & predictions.AI & ML in Insurance IndustryAI and ML technologies make it easier for insurance providers to use the data at their desired pace and way.
Many organizations in this industry have access to data that is usually structured and stored in databases.
