When Parkway Pantai sought to improve customer satisfaction by providing patients with more accurate hospital bill estimates, UCARE.AI stepped in with its innovative solution: the AI-Powered Pre-Admission Cost of Hospitalization Estimation (APACHE), which vastly improved its operational efficiency and customer satisfaction levels.
Neal Liu, founder and chief technology officer of UCARE.AI, shares his thoughts on how artificial intelligence can be leveraged to empower all stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem.
What sets UCARE.AI’s APACHE apart from other similar technologies?
APACHE is the first of its kind and has greatly helped to improve Parkway Pantai’s overall business operations.
Accurate bill estimates not only improved its operational efficiency through a reduced number of complaints. It also helped to build the trust between stakeholders within the healthcare ecosystem by offering patients greater certainty and transparency in terms of their hospitalisation fees.
The solution also enabled Parkway to launch its Price Guarantee Programme, helping to further improve customer satisfaction and increase revenue.
There are many ways to use AI and predictive insights to help businesses in their operations. But why is digital transformation particularly important for the healthcare industry?
The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed weaknesses in healthcare systems throughout the world. While countries are quick to treat those suffering from the virus, the burden on the healthcare system has shown the need for proactive investments to prepare for the future.
Problems of wastage and leakage from over-servicing and over-treatment require a whole village to fight. We believe UCARE.AI’s solutions will help to reduce the risk faced by insurers, and increase provider productivity and cost savings.
Why do you think some organisations in the healthcare sector resist digital transformation?
Digital transformation in the healthcare industry in Asia is still in its early stages. While some businesses have successfully implemented AI solutions, others are still learning about the technology.
A pain point in encouraging healthcare professionals to adopt AI is the second-mover strategy. No one wants to take the risk of implementing the technology first, but would rather see a few success stories before jumping on board. There is nothing wrong with this strategy other than the risk of being left behind.
What are UCARE.AI’s plans for the future?
We have created a new cloud-based platform named AlgoBox, which we aim to officially launch by the end of the year. It will be able to turn any organisation, big or small, into an AI powerhouse by simplifying the process of machine learning.
Although such AI systems can bring huge benefits to organisations when implemented, it takes a significant amount of effort to develop, deploy and most importantly, maintain the machine learning systems. AlgoBox will be able to resolve this issue by allowing users to collect and cleanse the data, and train and build algorithms with a few clicks.