The healthcare industry has spent the past few years asking what AI and digital technologies can do. The better questions now are: Where are there still pain points and how can the latest technology create meaningful value by addressing them?
Healthcare has never suffered from a lack of information. It has suffered from a lack of clarity. Every day, people face decisions that involve cost, quality, convenience, clinical guidance, and personal priorities. Our greatest opportunity in leveraging AI and new tech isn’t adding more information or replacing human judgment. It’s helping people navigate and make those decisions with greater confidence and support.
When applied thoughtfully, AI-enabled technologies can help people better understand their options, support more personalized decisions, improve collaboration across the healthcare system, and create more time for the conversations that matter most.
Here are five ways AI-enabled programs and digital technologies can create real-world value in healthcare:
1. Making Complex Information Clearer
Within healthcare, people often need help understanding what applies to them, what deserves their attention, and how different pieces of information fit together.
Today, AI-enabled tools in particular are beginning to bridge that gap by supporting the translation of complex healthcare information into plain language and making it easier to access that information when people need it most. Rather than asking people to interpret unfamiliar terminology or search across multiple resources, these technologies can help provide answers that are clearer, more relevant, and easier to act on.
For example, the Sydney Health app‘s Virtual Assistant helps people better understand their health insurance benefits, claims, costs, and care options. Members can ask questions such as, “Is my surgery covered, and how much will it cost?” and receive personalized cost estimates, coverage information, and a list of in-network providers within seconds.
According to our internal research, nearly 9 out of 10 people used Virtual Assistant to help find the answers they need, instead of calling customer service. At the same time, the app has saved members an estimated 1.5 million hours navigating healthcare. The goal isn’t to generate more information. It’s to make better use of the information people already have.
2. Providing Context Through Connection
Consider someone preparing for surgery. They may have questions about what’s covered, what it will cost, which providers are in network, or what steps come next. Not long ago, finding those answers often meant navigating multiple websites, making numerous phone calls, or piecing together information from different sources.
Today, AI-enabled solutions can help bring that information together in a way that’s easier to understand, allowing people to spend less time navigating the system and more time focusing on their health. One example is the Sydney Health app’s provider matching tool, which uses more than 500 data points to help connect members with care providers who best fit their needs. More than 20% of members have already used the feature.
The most valuable AI-assisted tools don’t simply answer questions. They help people make decisions with greater confidence.
3. Enhancing — Not Replacing — Human Judgment
One of the biggest misconceptions about AI is that it replaces human expertise. Healthcare needs the opposite.
Technology excels at identifying patterns, organizing information, and surfacing insights that might otherwise be overlooked. People remain essential for applying clinical judgment, understanding nuance, and making decisions that reflect each person’s unique circumstances.
The greatest opportunity is equipping care teams with AI-enabled technology and digital tools that surface better information quickly so they can focus on the moments where experience, empathy, and judgment matter most.
At Elevance Health for example, AI supports call center associates by surfacing relevant information quickly which allows associates to spend more time answering member questions and less time searching for information.
4. Building the Data Foundation
No one makes healthcare decisions alone. Patients, providers, caregivers, and health plans are each a key part of the puzzle.
One of healthcare’s biggest challenges isn’t a lack of expertise, it’s fragmented information. When providers, health plans, and patients aren’t working from the same information, everyone spends more time chasing records than making decisions.
Technology creates value when it helps those perspectives come together. Connected information and digital interoperability make it easier for care teams to work from the same understanding, reducing unnecessary administrative work while supporting more coordinated care.
One example is Health OS, Elevance Health’s digital interoperability platform. By improving information sharing across the healthcare system, Health OS has helped reduce lack-of-information denials by 68%, eliminating unnecessary peer-to-peer reviews while reducing administrative burden for providers. The platform helps members get the right care at the right time and supports their care team by providing them with accurate and comprehensive health information while maintaining privacy and security.
The strongest decisions rarely come from one perspective. They emerge when the right people have the right information at the right time.
5. Building Trust to Fuel Innovation
Every major technology evolution eventually reaches the same question: Can people trust it? Technology used within healthcare is no different and, arguably, is more important because healthcare is so personal.
Trust requires more than technology alone. It requires transparency, governance, privacy protections, and meaningful human oversight. It also requires recognizing that AI-enabled tools should support clinicians, care teams, and patients, not replace the relationships that remain central to healthcare. For instance, our Responsible AI program focuses on ensuring appropriate practices are in place to identify and mitigate harmful bias, and to promote accuracy, security, and transparency in our AI systems.
As leaders in healthcare, we must innovate quickly to respond to the needs of those we serve, but we must also remember that trust is earned over time. Every new capability should strengthen trust, not ask people to compromise it.
The organizations creating the greatest long-term value with AI won’t simply deploy more technology. They’ll use it in ways that help people feel more informed, more supported, and more confident in the decisions they make.
The Future of AI and Digital Technology Is In Helping Make Better Decisions
Companies that create the greatest value to people’s health won’t necessarily be those with the most advanced algorithms. They’ll be the ones that strengthen human judgment, bring care teams closer together, and build confidence in every interaction to help people better understand their options.
Success won’t be measured by how many tasks AI or technology automates or how many questions it answers.
It will be measured by something far more meaningful: whether it helps solve real problems, helps reduce unnecessary work, and helps people make better decisions about their health.
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