Cigna Group, OpenAI team up to support patients with complex conditions

Cigna is teaming up with OpenAI to build out more personalized supports for individuals with complex conditions, starting with a focus on cancer patients.

The companies said in an announcement that Cigna intends to embed OpenAI's frontier reasoning models into both its clinical workflows and consumer-facing experiences across its ecosystem. This will allow its teams to better support cancer patients by identifying potential needs or concerns more quickly and enhancing care coordination, even between in-person physician visits.

Cigna said one of the goals is to make it easier for patients to access key information and navigate next steps within its existing channels and programs. 

The partners plan to continue building on the collaboration over time to lean on a "broad range of health intelligence capabilities" to support patients across an array of different health needs, per the announcement.

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

“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," Andresen said.