Cigna, OpenAI partner on AI-driven personalized cancer care

A new partnership between the Cigna Group and OpenAI aims to streamline care management and drive personalized care for people with complex conditions, the companies announced last week.

The partnership will bring together OpenAI's frontier reasoning capabilities and Cigna's clinical expertise and care management insights. This, plus a connection into Cigna's Accredo Specialty Pharmacy, should help clinical care teams anticipate patient needs, provide personalized early intervention and coordinate processes across disparate care teams.

"The real promise of AI is not simply that it can help us move faster. It helps us make every patient experience more personalized," Katya Andresen, chief data, digital and AI officer at the Cigna Group, said in a press release.

"By combining OpenAI's frontier model capability with our clinical expertise, integrated health care context and ability to connect people to care, we are building a clinical intelligence capability that can help anticipate needs earlier, support more personalized action and improve how we serve patients over time."

The deal will initially focus on oncology, helping to flag emerging needs early on, personalize support and improve care coordination across doctor's visits, treatment side effects, new symptoms and patient questions.

Take, for example, a newly diagnosed breast cancer patient. After initiating treatment, the AI system might flag that most patients begin to feel nausea. The system could automate patient outreach to assess side effects and coordinate with the patient and care team to mitigate those issues.

That data becomes part of the patient's record, helping to further personalize care interventions throughout treatment. Likewise, the AI system takes in patient feedback, such as questions and communication preferences, to refine itself.

According to Amy Flaster, chief medical officer at the Cigna Group, these functions are invaluable to individuals navigating life-changing and serious illness.

"Whether a patient is struggling with treatment side effects or coping with the emotional impact of a diagnosis, bringing the power of OpenAI to The Cigna Group will help connect patients to our specialized clinicians, resources and support," Flaster said in the press release. "This is how we can begin to realize the promise of AI to unlock better health outcomes: identifying issues earlier, offering support between doctors' visits, and making complex care feel less overwhelming."

This AI initiative builds on Accredo's Pharmacy Forward program, which Cigna designed to boost medication adherence and time to treatment. It also builds on Cigna's personalized care management capabilities, which are cutting avoidable hospital stays by 42% among patients engaged in the program, the company said in the press release.

Cigna confirmed that AI-generated information is subject to human oversight and that clinicians are still responsible for patient care. Patient data is still managed in a way that's consistent with applicable privacy and security best practices, the company said.

Sara Heath is an executive editor at Xtelligent Healthcare Media, where she covers patient engagement, healthcare policy and health IT.