Original text here from Patrice Bernard (LinkedIn)
Since its inception, Alan has approached healthcare not just through insurance, which is its core business, but as a comprehensive experience. To enhance the support offered by its affiliated healthcare professionals, the French startup is now adding a kind of AI-powered virtual assistant to their toolkit.
Among Alan’s new autumn 2024 features in prevention are a curated selection of 100 health products, all French-made and sold at negotiated prices to help users maintain physical fitness, from nutritional supplements to connected devices. They’re also rolling out a pedometer program with fun features to encourage walking. But the highlight is “Mo.”
Subscribe to our newsletter:
Mo is a virtual assistant embedded in Alan’s app chat feature, where insured users can connect with general practitioners and specialists for everyday health concerns (these aren’t formal consultations). Mo serves as the initial contact, instantly addressing users’ questions, while always allowing for a seamless transfer to a human professional if needed.
The benefit for users is clear: instead of waiting up to 15 minutes for an available professional (and sometimes longer), the intelligent assistant provides instant responses, reducing frustrations. For healthcare providers, it’s a relief to handle only the more complex cases that lie outside the AI’s capabilities.
However, the introduction of an AI-based tool providing medical advice does raise concerns, given the potential for “hallucinations” or errors from algorithms. To address these issues and reassure patients, Alan has implemented a systematic review process: every automated “prescription” is reviewed by a doctor within 15 minutes, either confirmed or corrected. This review likely helps to continually refine the model.
Though there may be a selection bias, results from the multi-month pilot phase suggest surprising confidence among users, with four out of five preferring to interact with Mo over the human professional they originally sought, and rating the experience an average of 4.6 out of 5. Notably, healthcare professionals approved 93% of Mo’s responses, likely contributing to this high satisfaction.
Through this cautious but innovative approach, Alan expands its scope to address more health and wellness needs beyond mere reimbursement. As it matures, this approach promises to foster new behaviors that benefit all stakeholders—users in quality of life, employers in productivity, and Alan itself in profitability.
