SCAN Group makes investment in AI company Cresta

SCAN Group will make a strategic investment in Cresta, which has built a generative AI platform for contact centers, the insurer told Fierce Healthcare exclusively.

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SCAN deployed Cresta’s platform for its member services team earlier this year. The program is designed to make their workflow easier by assisting with notetaking, suggesting potential talking points and identifying trends among callers, according to the announcement.

SCAN said its member services division addresses more than 1 million calls each year. It’s seen a 96% adoption rate of the technology so far and has been able to cut down after-hours work for the team from 19% to 15%.

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The goal, according to SCAN, is to address burnout among member services workers to ensure they’re offering a high-quality experience to callers.

Rona Li, chief corporate development officer at SCAN, told Fierce in an interview that Cresta’s platform had generally been deployed in other industries prior to the partnership with SCAN, but the technology team pretty quickly saw the potential for member calls.

The process of adapting Cresta’s tools to healthcare also opened the door for potential future applications, she said.

“I think we all know that health that consumers are demanding more of health care, but in trying to actually deliver that, we need to be a little bit uncomfortable,” Li said.

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Ping Wu, CEO of Cresta, told Fierce that the team is looking to innovate in multiple areas, and the investment from SCAN will help bring those goals to fruition. For example, he said, generative AI can play a role by providing real-time translation services for patients whose primary language isn’t English.

“There are many different ways that we are innovating,” he said. “SCAN sees the value in that.”

The investment in Cresta is SCAN’s ninth to date, and Li said the team is focused on finding investments that can have tangible business impacts. Those can range from clinical outcomes to member experience to cost savings, she said.

Cresta touches on administrative burden and cost as well as member satisfaction with call centers. Given improvements there, it also has potential to eventually drive improvements in care. For instance, a call center worker equipped with details about a member’s medical conditions can communicate more proactively and help close care gaps.

“Hitting all three is rare for some of the investments that we have, and we’re glad that we have Cresta as one that leads the way,” Li said.