Three years after inking a five-year $500 million deal with IBM to support its move to the cloud, Anthem is expanding its agreement with the technology giant to focus operational efficiency.
On Thursday, the two companies announced they were expanding the services covered under the agreement to help Anthem modernize its technology platforms, including embedding artificial intelligence into employee workflows and developing consumer engagement technologies.
“Within this partnership, it’s an extension and expansion in a number of areas, and accelerating the pace with which we’re using artificial intelligence to really drive automation for them,” Lori Steele, managing director of IBM Healthcare.
IBM and Anthem declined to provide the financials around. Steele would only say the deal is both an extension and an expansion of the initial agreement signed in 2015.
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That agreement was part of the insurer’s move to the cloud to consolidate its technology infrastructure. Since then, IBM has helped Anthem build more than 130 bots used to automate high volume, repetitive administrative tasks such as recognizing when a server has reached its peak and offloading data.
IBM has also introduced chatbots into user support services, allowing employees to streamline tasks and identify peak customer call times.
“Our continued strategic partnership with IBM will help establish a stronger foundation for Anthem to respond to the changing demands in the market, deliver greater quality of services for consumers and help accelerate Anthem’s focus on leading the transformation of healthcare to create a more accessible, more affordable, more accountable healthcare system for all Americans,” Tim Skeen, Anthem’s senior vice president and chief information officer said in a statement.
Anthem—like many other insurers—has been methodically building its digital capabilities. Last week the insurer announced a new partnership with American Well and Samsung to offer patients access to telehealth through a mobile app.