Technology and the Private Health Care Industry

Gone are the days where the only way to buy health cover was to sit with your broker or health cover insurance clerk over a cup of tea and a long paper form. Lots of business today is conducted on-line and over the phone with technology playing a huge part in the smooth-running of the health insurance business.

This week AFA Insurance (the umbrella company for AFA Medical Insurance) announced its investment in ReadSoft's Classify and Index products brought in in order to automate the handling of three additional insurance products. Maria Welin-Persson from AFA Insurance says,

The objective of this investment is to ensure the quality of our information and to streamline our processes. These in turn lead to improvements in efficiency throughout the organization. We want to use our resources in the most optimal way and, with the aid of ReadSoft's solutions, free up administrators' valuable time so that they instead can focus on helping our customers

Teleunderwriting is another technological advancement which is known to help counteract non-disclosure and therefore provide a better service for health insurance customers. Teleunderwriting is the process in which trained personnel interview clients over the phone to gather risk-related information.

Lovers of technology see developments as a great bonus to the smooth running and efficiency of health cover businesses but those who distrust it warn that all business is about people and that its important not to loose sight of this particularly in the health insurance sector as they are dealing with real people with very real concerns and problems.