The Infinitus Blog

Recently, my colleague Brian Haenni and I hosted a webinar as part of the Infinitus HAI25 series looking at the trends, adoption, and opportunities across the healthcare landscape. As part of that webinar (now available on-demand here), I made three predictions for transformative shifts coming in the healthcare landscape that are driven by the rapid...

In September, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced a change that many initially missed: Medicare Administrative Contractors (MACs) will remove beneficiary eligibility information from their interactive voice response (IVR) systems by March 31, 2025. Some have already begun to do so. With this change, CMS aims to improve security, reduce fraud, and...

For healthcare workers already plagued by the burden of administrative overwhelm, repeatedly checking in on the status of a prior authorization adds to an already taxing clerical burden. And yet, it’s necessary – if these calls aren’t completed in a timely fashion, patients can face delays in treatment and providers risk losing revenue. That’s why...

Today’s patients have access to more information and are more engaged consumers of their care than ever before. This has underscored the importance of patient services, and has led to a shift in focus from traditional, provider-centered models toward true patient centricity. Much progress has been made, in terms of addressing the needs, values, and...

In an industry where AI hype often overshadows substance, healthcare operations teams must understand the spectrum of applications and uses of AI – and even more importantly, understand how to get started. That was Infinitus Product Lead Brendan Foley’s core message in the first webinar of our HAI25 webinar series, Unlocking healthcare at scale: AI...

In August, we released The truth about prior authorization, our inaugural report analyzing data collected directly from payors to understand whether – and how – efforts to improve healthcare’s “burden turned nightmare” have had any effect.  As we wrote in the report, no one likes prior auth; patients, providers, and payors have all spoken out...

We are excited to announce that John Driscoll has joined the Infinitus board of directors. Senior advisor at Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) and EQT Group, Driscoll brings with him more than 25 years of healthcare leadership experience. Before joining WBA, Driscoll served as CEO at CareCentrix; as president at Castlight Health, a healthcare technology company;...

Often, new solutions for call center staff claim that they’re powered by AI when in reality, they’re just hoping to capitalize on a buzzworthy phrase. At best, these tools may offer a simple wrapper around an existing GPT model and call it a day.  This matters because GPT on its own cannot do what FastTrack™,...

We founded Infinitus with a vision to make healthcare “wait-less.” Since our founding in 2019, we’ve been committed to creating a future where (a) every patient has up-to-the-minute information and support at every stage of their healthcare journey, (b) technology works for employees instead of the other way around, and (c) our company can continue...

We are excited to announce that FastTrack™, the first purpose-built AI copilot for healthcare, enters general availability today. FastTrack is an enterprise-ready AI copilot that enables healthcare staff, such as reimbursement specialists, to bypass tedious IVR systems and avoid hold times. This helps healthcare companies to save time so they can serve more patients. Whether...

Organizations across the care continuum are embracing AI’s potential, but no two leaders approach its use in the same way.  We know the buzz around the technology is growing – AI recently was ranked as the most exciting emerging technology for the fourth year in a row in an executive survey. But to understand more...

This week, members of the Infinitus team attended the NASP Annual Meeting in Nashville. The conference brings together leaders from across the specialty pharmacy sector to explore trends, challenges, and innovations shaping the industry. While each annual meeting offers valuable insights, this year there was a notable emphasis on artificial intelligence. Numerous sessions and booths...

We’re excited to announce a SMART on FHIR application that can support electronic health record (EHR) integrations across our product suite. With this app, Infinitus solutions can be launched directly from within popular systems of record for health systems. The solution enables users of these systems to trigger offerings in the Infinitus platform, like our...

Healthcare has many problems to solve today – patient access to care, high costs, manual processes, older technology, and more. But it also offers a great opportunity to have a positive impact on people’s lives during the moments that matter. That’s a big part of what drew me to the industry.  At Infinitus, we have...

We’re excited to announce a strategic partnership with Salesforce, enabling Infinitus voice AI agents to be activated directly from Life Sciences Cloud. With the partnership, Life Sciences Cloud users can utilize our voice AI agent to call payors and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) to verify insurance benefits, navigate prior authorizations, and check the statuses of...

As people lead at Infinitus, I have the unique pleasure of seeing our culture come to life in incredible ways. InfiniCamp, our annual offsite event, is hands down one of my favorite times of the year. It’s a chance for us to come together, reconnect, and get excited about the year ahead. This year was no...

Prior authorization is a utilization management tool – its intention is to keep costs in check while ensuring patients receive appropriate treatments. But in a recent survey, 86% of respondents said prior auths actually resulted in increased use of resources, leading to waste rather than the cost savings they’re intended to create.  And yet, prior...

Helping patients access therapy as efficiently as possible is critical to improving outcomes. This is just one of the reasons electronic benefit verification (eBV) solutions are popular – they represent a streamlined approach to getting the data that makes medication access possible. But with so many options on the market, and as technology and AI...

At Infinitus, our company values – C.O.D.E.S. – are the principles that link us together as we work toward a common goal. Last week, our team gathered in San Francisco for one of our favorite events of the year: InfiniCamp, our annual company offsite.  As it does every year, our time together reminds us that...

SAN FRANCISCO – August 7, 2024 – Infinitus has been named the winner of a Silver Stevie® Award in the Healthcare Technology – Technology Breakthrough of the Year category in the first annual Stevie Awards for Technology Excellence, “the Olympics for technology.” The Stevie Awards for Technology Excellence celebrate the remarkable accomplishments of individuals, teams,...

We’re excited to announce our AI eBV+ solution for patients covered by commercial insurance seeking access to specialty medications. Along with our existing instant Medicare Part B benefit verification offering, we are proud to now offer our customers a comprehensive AI-powered solution that goes beyond traditional eBV solutions and empowers healthcare providers to unlock medical...

Earlier this year, we shared the details of our multi-model, multimodal AI system. Now we’re introducing some of the human experts who help make the work of Infinitus, and our human-in-the-loop machine learning, possible. Infinitus learns a lot from human feedback – which is why it’s important to note that our human team represents all...

Frequently, our customers have described the Infinitus AI agent as a super-productive member of their teams. And while we focus on creating products that augment busy healthcare workers – and don’t replace them – we understand why some think of our agent like a coworker. We’re officially in the era of “AI co-workers” after all. But...

This piece is excerpted from Separating AI fact from fiction: A guide for healthcare leaders. You can read the full ebook here. If what’s written about in popular media were to be believed, there’s nothing AI can’t quickly and easily automate. In reality, that’s not exactly the case – especially when it comes to sensitive,...

The recently released 2024 Future Health Index zeroed in on something all healthcare workers have known for some time: staffing shortages are hindering the ability to provide the best possible patient experience.  The good news is, per the report, it seems healthcare leaders have realized that a solution may be found in the automation of...

We’re excited to share a new model architecture that outperforms other approaches for phone call automation in our real world, healthcare setting. The model is a graph aware language transformer, which has more flexibility than traditional model pipelines and more reliability (meaning no hallucinations), as well as lower latency than the latest prompt models for...

We often speak about the importance of humans in the loop in AI, and how Infinitus uses humans in concert with our purpose-built AI system. Our human experts serve a number of roles in our ecosystem, including stepping into live calls the Infinitus AI agent is conducting with payor representatives. This may occur if the...

Infinitus is a healthcare AI company, but humans play a number of key roles in delivering a seamless experience to our customers and those who receive our AI agent’s calls. Like most companies that build modern AI systems, we learn a lot from human feedback – which is why it’s important to note that our...

Our customers have referred to Infinitus AI agents as the best performers on their team. And while these voice AI agents may seem like magic to the payor representatives they speak to, it is in fact the Infinitus knowledge graph that powers the agent’s capabilities.  Those capabilities are anything but simple. The voice AI agents...

Today, more than 34.2 million Americans are enrolled in original Medicare plans. This can create a challenge for pharma hubs, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and healthcare providers, which must understand Medicare Part B coverage before treatment can proceed.  That’s why Infinitus is excited to announce our newest offering: instantaneous Medicare Part B benefit verifications. With our new...

The Inflation Reduction Act – or IRA – contains $500 billion in new funding and tax breaks intended to boost clean energy, strengthen taxpayer compliance, and reduce healthcare costs. It includes three provisions concerning Medicare prescription drug prices that have the potential to dramatically impact the pharmaceutical industry, and patient support in particular. For a...

Last week, members of the Infinitus team attended Asembia’s AXS24 Summit, the annual conference that brings together leaders from across the pharmaceutical landscape to discuss the industry’s biggest trends, issues, and developments. Every Asembia summit is a chance to learn – and not only from speakers who take the stage – and this year’s conference...

AI agents are everywhere, with some news outlets proclaiming them to be the future of AI. We don’t disagree.  At Infinitus, we talk a lot about our voice AI agents and fully digital AI agents, and the technology that powers them. Infinitus voice AI agents make phone calls to commercial and government payors on behalf...

You’re ready to embrace AI. Now what? Any AI solution under consideration should help empower your patient support program to provide streamlined processes and, ultimately, quicker access to medications for those who need them most. To accomplish this, however, you’ll need to be sure you’re choosing the right vendor and that you can get colleagues...

How we use humans in concert with our multi-model, multimodal AI system to deliver real efficiency to over a dozen Fortune 500 healthcare customers Automating administrative phone calls in healthcare is no easy feat. The benefit verifications and prior authorization inquiries Infinitus automates can be an hour long, with hundreds of back-and-forth interactions that require...

There’s a lot to see and do at Asembia’s AXS24 Summit, and more people than you could ever hope to meet in just five days. Which means it takes some preparation to successfully navigate what others have dubbed “spring prom” for the specialty pharmacy industry. I’ve been attending the summit for 10 years, which means...

Since Change Healthcare abruptly shut down its network Feb. 21, disruptions across the healthcare landscape have been far reaching. One unforeseen result has been a backlog of calls to payors and pharmacies, making it even harder for providers to get access to live agents on the phone. In an analysis of calls made by the...

If you ask many experts, they’ll tell you AI is a discipline within computer science. After all, AI is concerned with creating computer systems that can perform tasks typically requiring human intelligence; it makes logical sense.  I understand where those that label AI as computer science are coming from. But I also disagree with them. ...

Increasingly employer-sponsored plans are including copay accumulators, copay maximizers, or alternative funding sources as part of their plan design. In fact, estimates suggest about half of all lives covered by commercial insurance are enrolled in a plan that utilizes a copay accumulator and/or a maximizer.  If your team is responsible for guiding individuals through coverage...

On March 1, we celebrated Employee Appreciation Day, a great opportunity to stop and take a moment to celebrate what makes Infinitus a place I truly love to work: the people. As our CEO Ankit Jain says, everything we’ve achieved “starts and ends with our people.”  Today, I’m so excited to announce that we have...

Technically, the annual insurance reverification period (often known as blizzard) lasts just a handful of weeks. However, reality tells a different story. We know our customers spend months preparing for each January, when patients’ access to medication can be put into question because of changes to formularies, deductibles, and out-of-pocket requirements.  With this year’s blizzard...

February marked a milestone for Infinitus as we celebrated five years. From the initial spark of an idea, to the role Bruce Willis played in early tests, to the real change Infinitus is effecting on the healthcare ecosystem today, it’s been quite a journey.  As we reflect on half a decade of Infinitus, we sat...

Chatbots are everywhere in healthcare news, with some outlets even proclaiming the AI-powered technology to be “the future of healthcare.”  At the same time, you’ve likely heard about conversational AI’s potential to transform the industry too.  But when it comes to provider- or payor-facing communications, like phone calls to retail pharmacies or major medical insurance...

2023 will go down in history as the year artificial intelligence in its current incarnation went mainstream, and it won’t be slowing down this year. To many, the technology’s arrival – and pressure to be incorporated at work – felt sudden. Regardless, the healthcare industry is in dire need of the kind of help AI...

It’s just a phone call. What could be so complicated? At first consideration, conducting – and even automating – phone calls to major medical payors and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) to perform benefit verifications doesn’t seem as if it should be all that complex. After all, these calls are extremely common, extremely frequent, and entirely necessary....

While AI is dominating many conversations in healthcare, relatively few organizations in the space actually use generative AI tools, according to a recent survey. Among the primary reasons why are concerns about hallucinations, accuracy, and reliability. At Infinitus, we are committed to our mission of improving access, adherence, and affordability in healthcare – but along...

Popular weight-loss medications Wegovy and Saxenda are somehow both everywhere and nowhere.  It’s nearly impossible to avoid the headlines about these injectables, part of a class of medication known as GLP-1 agonists that were originally intended to treat type 2 diabetes or severe obesity. The media has detailed which celebrities might be taking them and...

If the ultimate goal of patient support programs is to create holistic, patient-centric ecosystems of assistance, 2023 saw strides forward. Patient support programs are better than ever at creating and analyzing meaningful data and have improved dramatically at providing the personalized engagement that patients desire. But there is still more to be done.  In 2024,...

At Infinitus, we spend a lot of time talking about the advantages of benefit verification automation. AI can transform healthcare’s back-office administrative processes, helping create time for the industry to improve access, adherence, and affordability – something we’re committed to as an organization. But why is benefit verification, specifically, a strong fit for automation?  Read...

Benefit verification is one of the first steps after a patient schedules an appointment or is prescribed medication, but that doesn’t mean it’s a quick, easy, or inexpensive task. In fact, studies show that up to a quarter of total national healthcare costs can be chalked up to administrative expenses like benefit verification. Despite attempts...

Depending on your company and role within healthcare, you’re either researching AI, experimenting with AI, or scaling up your approach. But regardless of where you are in your AI journey, there are a number of questions to answer and items to mull over.  Here are some key considerations to weigh as you embark upon creating...

We’re often asked whether the Infinitus digital assistant uses ChatGPT, or on a more general level, whether ChatGPT can automate calls from healthcare providers to payors like Infinitus does. After all, based on the media coverage OpenAI’s chatbot has received, it almost seems as if there’s nothing ChatGPT can’t do.  It’s worth noting that ChatGPT...

For healthcare leaders in 2023, understanding the nuances of artificial intelligence (AI) is essential. Whether you’re a seasoned healthcare professional or newer to the industry, odds are you’re being asked to incorporate AI into your plans.  But the world of AI can be complex, filled with terminology and acronyms that can be overwhelming. Below, we’ve...

AI is everywhere – dominating headlines, business meetings, and even conversations at the dining room table. But as healthcare and pharma leaders, and not necessarily AI experts, many of our customers and partners have questions about the technology.  Machine learning, deep learning, large language models (LLMs), generative AI … these terms are all interconnected, but...

The COVID-19 pandemic increased the amount of time we spend communicating through screens instead of in person. The result: a growing sense of isolation, one that the US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy believes contributed to an “epidemic of loneliness.” This highlights a paradox: Healthcare, one of the most personal of services, now lacks connection...

Picture today’s tech landscape as a pendulum in motion, swinging between two distinct poles. At one extreme, there’s a somewhat prevalent notion where AI not only equals, but eventually outshines human intelligence. On the other side, there’s a lingering concern that AI could displace human roles, rendering us obsolete.  This narrative overlooks the fertile middle...

Healthcare professionals generally gravitate to the field because they genuinely want to help people. In my experience, from senior clinicians to researchers to administrative staff, everyone’s goal is to ensure patients get the right treatment as quickly as possible. One thing not on their career plan? Spending hours on the phone trying to complete benefit...

Since the start of Infinitus in 2019, I have had the privilege of witnessing our team’s incredible journey. The past few months have exemplified the heart, tenacity, and dedication of every single member of our team, as we worked through both challenges and opportunities. And this week, we were able to bring the entire team...

As the American Medical Association puts it, prior authorization creates “a huge administrative burden” for healthcare providers that often delays patient care. Despite this, reports suggest prior authorizations are increasingly common – and are increasingly leading to problems. The good news is: Prior authorization automation – especially in patient access programs – can be a...

At Infinitus, we develop and use artificial intelligence (AI) in a responsible manner. This includes avoiding creating or reinforcing unfair bias. We are optimistic that our AI and machine learning (ML) techniques are fair and unbiased, but recognize that advanced technologies can raise concerns and challenges.  Infinitus provides software as a service (SaaS) applications and...

San Francisco — Aug. 29, 2023 — Infinitus Systems, Inc., the AI platform for healthcare communications, today announced it is expanding its use of Google Cloud AI technologies to automate payor-facing medical and pharmacy benefit verifications and prior authorization calls. 

On Aug. 22, we were joined for a special talk by NBA veteran and four-time league champion Andre Iguodala. The all-star swingman, who played in the league for almost two decades, spoke candidly about his experience as an athlete, an investor, and a father. Here are 10 takeaways from Iguodala’s fireside chat with the Infinitus...

The world of AI and large language models (LLMs) is in a state of constant flux, change, and improvement. At Infinitus, we’re focused on keeping up with the latest – both in our own research, and in that which we read. It is our hope that the research papers and articles below will provide some...

When it comes to prior authorizations (PAs), ePA or 278 solutions aren’t enough. It’s often challenging to resolve complex or time-sensitive prior authorizations electronically. Details such as PA status, denial reasons, and appeal options either aren’t readily available or the turnaround time is too long. In these cases, healthcare providers’ staff often manually call a...

To date, Infinitus automates calls on behalf of healthcare providers to more than 1400 payors. Those calls are faster and result in more accurate data for our customers, but we’re still often asked: Why do payors take calls from the Infinitus digital assistant? As it is for healthcare providers, digital transformation is a top priority...

A wrongly denied insurance claim is a double-whammy. First, and most importantly, it can cause a delay in a patient’s treatment (and as a result, delayed revenue for the provider). But it also results in increased costs associated with re-submitting a claim. And unfortunately, benefit verification errors, which lead to such denials, aren’t uncommon. Those...

Artificial intelligence (AI) dominates today’s headlines, with the stories see-sawing between two fears: AI will take over our brains, or humans will also lose their jobs to AI. “AI doomerism,” as the Techdirt blog calls it, sees little middle ground between humans and AI.  But at Infinitus, we have a more positive vision of the...

The new year is a time of hope and renewal, of setting goals and refocusing on the big picture. But it is also a time of uncertainty when it comes to health insurance; with the new year comes changes in health insurance coverage, cost share, and authorization requirements. This annual cycle creates uncertainty for patients about...

Recently, Arushi Raghuvanshi, Infinitus’ machine learning lead, presented the results of an Infinitus research project at the Association for Computational Linguistics annual meeting. The resulting research paper, “Leveraging Explicit Procedural Instructions for Data-Efficient Action Prediction,” explored leveraging explicitly stored agent guidelines, such as company policies, customer service manuals, or documents on standard operating procedures, to...

Recently there have been huge advancements in the ability of large language models (LLMs) to handle conversational systems. In many practical industry settings, the conversational AI systems we want to build are task-oriented dialog systems (TODs). In these systems, the goal is to help a user complete a task or collect certain information. For many...

When it comes to benefit verifications, ambulatory surgery centers are under intense pressure to turn around authorizations quickly. However, it’s not uncommon for this crucial task to take longer than expected. Coverage information online is often incomplete, and staff must make multiple calls to payors to close out inquiries and ensure procedural dates are met....

Healthcare executives in Pharmaceutical and Specialty Pharmacy industries are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Their staff is overwhelmed with a backlog of tasks, including calls to payors and PBMs to verify patient benefit information. While the status quo has been to hire more people, candidates are nowhere to be found and this...

San Francisco — May 16, 2023 — Infinitus Systems, Inc., the Conversational AI Platform for Healthcare, today announced that Gramercy Surgery Center, the #1 Ambulatory Surgery Center (ASC) in New York, has chosen Infinitus to automate tedious and time consuming tasks of insurance verification and prior authorization across its care sites. With Infinitus, Gramercy aims...

Key Insights: ‍ Much of the attention on healthcare has focused on lower patient outcomes even in the face of ever-escalating costs.  And there seems to be no end in sight. But lost in that understandable outrage is another important story around healthcare: the agony and emotional stress of waiting. A doctor visit can be...

We are excited to announce that Infinitus has been named one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies for 2023! It is an honor to join the ranks of organizations such as OpenAI, DeepMind, Nvidia, Unlearn, Roblox, and more.

For the second year in a row, Infinitus is certified as a great place to work!

Infinitus was recognized for the company’s achievements in the Google Cloud ecosystem, creating and promoting initiatives that made a positive and lasting impact on the world.

Today, we are proud to announce that we have successfully completed a SOC 2 Type II audit for the Infinitus platform and services.

We talk about being vulnerable in our day to day lives. Let's do that for our AI products as well. It'll enable everyone to understand the power, pitfalls and progress that our computers are making.

Every January, US healthcare operations workers go through hell. With Omicron, this year has been worse than most years. Here's a behind the scenes look at what happens..on healthcare phone-lines across the US in January. Why?

This week, we’re excited to be featuring Prithvi Sriram. Prithvi is part of our data team and has been helping improve the way in which we understand our system, our conversations and our operations. Prior to joining Infinitus, Prithvi was a member of Zynga's Data Analyst team.

The latest investment in Infinitus validates the urgent need to address the overwhelming administrative burden in healthcare and our vision to do so with VoiceRPA. This announcement comes on the heels of a tremendous growth period for Infinitus, having grown enterprise revenue by over 300% in the past twelve months.

Infinitus Systems, the leading VoiceRPA company for automating phone calls in healthcare, today announced its close of $30M in Series B financing, accelerating its position as the category leader in VoiceRPA.

This week, we’re excited to be featuring Omar Burney, one of our new grad recruits. Omar is part of our full stack engineering team and has been helping improve the data labeling and administrative portals.

There hasn’t been as much production level automation in longer form conversations, including phone calls, but there is a need for it. Many business operations today still happen over the phone and we discuss how we are solving these issues.

How Infinitus helped VaccinateCA improve their coverage of Covid-19 vaccination sites by automating calls to 2500 pharmacies every day.

We’re excited to announce that the Infinitus AI Benefit Verification offering is now generally available, and that we have raised $21.4 Million in Series Seed and Series A funding from Kleiner Perkins and Coatue Management.

This week, we’re excited to be featuring Sagar Gokhale. Sagar has been focused on infrastructure at Infinitus. He has been making sure that our systems are fast, secure and scalable.

This week, we’re excited to be featuring Max Parelius. Max has been focused on the frontend components of the Infinitus stack. He has been critical to the launch of our customer portal as well as ensuring that customer data stays segmented.

This week, we’re excited to be featuring Karen Holop. Karen has been focused on product management at Infinitus. She has been making sure that our systems meet customers’ needs, our roadmap is helping move the healthcare industry forward and our teams work smoothly with each other.

Today, my co-founder Shyam Rajagopalan and I are introducing the world to Infinitus, a voice robotic process automation (Voice RPA) company targeted to reduce the complexity and cost of healthcare in the United States. We have been working on this project since February 2019 and are excited to share our progress on it on this blog over the coming years.

In this post, I outline some of the breakthroughs we have had to make and preview some of the exciting technical challenges that lay ahead.

This week, we’re excited to be featuring Conal Sathi. Conal has been building the computer brains that drive the conversations that the Infinitus digital assistant has. From rule based systems to self-learning models, Conal has been pulling out all stops to make sure our customers are getting the most out of their Infinitus experience.

This week, we’re excited to be featuring Julian Frumar. Julian is a two time entrepreneur and thrives in early-stage companies that are figuring things out. He has also previously worked at Google and YouTube where he led the redesign of the YouTube player, watch page, and TV products.