Clinician-led artificial intelligence platform Anterior and health tech company Stellarus entered a strategic partnership Thursday to tackle automating prior authorizations.
The partnership aims to support providers through automating tasks—such as case research and policy application—to allow teams to focus on complex determinations. The companies say providers will receive quicker, first-time approvals, ultimately giving members quicker care access.
Through the partnership, Anterior’s clinical AI will integrate with Stellarus’s AtlasIQ platform to aid health plans in deploying quicker prior authorizations. All final determinations are made by licensed clinicians, not the AI tools, executives say.
“Every plan wants to use AI, it wants to transform,” said Abdel Mahmoud, M.D., Anterior CEO. “It knows [it] has the data, but doesn't know where to begin.”
The new partnership between Anterior and Stellarus aims to close that gap.
Stellarus is a healthcare technology company spun out of Blue Shield of California earlier this year. The health solutions company provides the tech backbone and digital capabilities for nonprofit, community and regional health plans.
Mahmoud told Fierce Healthcare the two companies have a “shared vision.”
“We see the same data challenges across all of healthcare, we see the interoperability issues, [but] we see the potential as well,” Mahmoud said. “A lot of the answers, a lot of the inefficiencies can be solved with today's technology.”
Prior authorizations are the “most obvious low-hanging fruit” for automation, Mahmoud said.
“There's a lot more downstream stuff we can do once we structure the prior auth,” he said. “We can pull a lot of proactive care forward.”
Skepticism and concern towards AI in healthcare “comes from a good place,” Mahmoud said, adding that Stellaris represents “good, proper use of AI.”
“The fact that we're partnering with them, it sends a signal to the market that we're taking it seriously,” he said.
Stellarus President and CEO Vanessa Colella said in a statement that Anterior’s leadership and “commitment to responsible automation make them an ideal partner.”
“By bringing together Anterior’s decisioning capabilities with the Stellarus core platform and domain expertise, we are giving plans a way to automate the most complex parts of prior authorization without sacrificing clinical integrity or governance,” Colella said. “This partnership is designed to shorten turnaround times and reduce manual review, while ensuring every determination remains explainable, auditable, and aligned with plan-specific clinical policies.”
As the partnership progresses, executives say it will expand into care planning, policy optimization and broader utilization management.