Humana backs Healthpilot
Health company Humana announced a minority investment in Healthpilot, which offers a digital enrollment experience for Medicare options.
Founded in 2020, Healthpilot claims to use an AI-powered model, developed by co-founder Dr. Jonathan Kolstad, to offer Medicare Advantage, Medicare Supplement, and prescription drug plan recommendations based on unique healthcare needs. The digital platform matches enrollees with the best Medicare plan options using their health profile, physician choices, drug use, and cost preferences. Most applications are submitted without needing assistance from customer support.
In the past, we covered the news that Lincoln Financial Network (LFN), the retail wealth management affiliate of Lincoln Financial Group, is working with Healthpilot to make it easier for its financial professionals to leverage proprietary, AI-driven technology to integrate Medicare planning into their businesses.
“This investment in Healthpilot represents a strategic step forward in Humana’s digital growth journey and underscores our commitment to leveraging cutting-edge technology to further enhance payor-agnostic, omnichannel broker capabilities. Healthpilot’s platform provides a more personalized and simpler digital enrollment experience for seniors, and we are excited to improve the education, shopping and enrollment experiences for customers that purchase Medicare products from Healthpilot. By leveraging Healthpilot’s advanced analytics and AI, beneficiaries can be paired with plans that best meet their needs, thereby enhancing their overall healthcare experience.” – David Dintenfass, President of Enterprise Growth at Humana .
“Healthpilot is seeking to redefine the Medicare plan shopping experience with a customer-centric approach that leverages leading, AI-powered technology and an elegant user-interface. We are pleased to have the opportunity to collaborate more closely with Humana. Their financial investment will fuel our ambitious goals of improving our customer product experience, growing our brand online, accelerating data analytics, and enhancing our AI capabilities. These advancements will allow us to better serve the millions of seniors in need of a simplified digital shopping experience.” – Seth Teich, CEO of Healthpilot .
Bottom Line: Health IQ and its failed precision Medicare AI platform come to mind. Once a promising company (at least according to Andreessen Horowitz and Aquiline Technology Growth), Health IQ aimed to transform the Medicare sales industry with AI-driven technology, only to face a series of setbacks and ultimately fail. Health IQ co-founder Munjal Shah is now the co-founder and CEO of Hippocratic AI, which allows healthcare facilities to “hire” generative AI agents to complete low-risk, non-diagnostic, patient-facing healthcare tasks. It first raised $53 million in May 2023, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst. Four months ago, it raised another $53 million, bringing its total funding to $120 million at a valuation of $500 million. Gotta give Shah credit, as it took him over five years to reach this valuation with his insurance startup. And so the bottom line of this bottom line is best stated by quoting Darian Shirazi of Gradient Ventures: “We make it up. There’s literally no science to how we determine pre-seed and seed valuations.”
