Today, we’re excited to announce our partnership with @Woebot Health and PayrollPlans to bring AI-enabled primary and mental healthcare to over 2 million companies employing over 70 million underserved American workers. PayrollPlans was created by Insurance Applications Group, Inc. (IAG) and is a proprietary digital ecosystem that integrates into payroll software used by independent payroll processors and their small-to-medium enterprise clients. Through this partnership, Curai Health and Woebot Health will offer PayrollPlan’s clients’ workforces convenient access to high-quality, affordable virtual primary and mental healthcare at scale.
In a nation where more than half of us get our health insurance through employers, people in less stable employment situations and those working for small businesses have too often fallen through the cracks. Now through this partnership, millions of Americans who have historically been left out of healthcare access can now access care. These are Americans who typically either work for a small business that is not legally required to and cannot afford to offer healthcare or are temporary workers with transient employment. Serving these groups is only possible because of our ability to offer affordable healthcare services, which can only be done at scale with AI, and to administer a benefit that works for their unique work conditions, something PayrollPlans has uniquely solved. Curai Health will be providing the primary care access, and Woebot Health will provide their AI- based mental health offering.
We’re especially excited because of the caliber of these two organizations. We’ve long respected Woebot Health’s work and rigor in bringing cutting-edge AI to expanding mental healthcare access, and their founder, Alison Darcy, ran Andrew Ng’s Health Innovation Lab in Computer Science at Stanford, where I also studied in college. Mental healthcare also is an important offering to pair with primary care, as patients often need both. Unfortunately, supporting mental health is often overlooked or not possible given the acute shortage of mental health providers in this country. Through this partnership, Curai will be able to refer patients with mental health needs to Woebot and vice versa.
IAG’s vision, knowledge, and relationships in these employer markets make bringing such an offering possible. For nearly a quarter century, IAG has focused on bringing healthcare access to individuals who have been underserved by our healthcare system. Primarily, they’ve worked with temporary and part-time workers as well as the grocery and trucking industries and small businesses. The IAG team showed tremendous vision to understand the needs of these populations and the potential for AI-enabled services to bring affordable access. IAG also has an impressive Net Promoter Score of 77.7, which is more than two times greater than the insurance industry average, placing IAG in the “World Class” customer service category. This kind of vision has been sorely lacking in traditional employer insurance offerings, and IAG will continue to be a leader in bringing innovative benefits to employers across the nation.
Because of the unique challenges of serving these populations, this partnership combines the expertise of three organizations to bring a unique solution to this problem: IAG brings its history of working with these employers at scale to distribute health benefits through PayrollPlans. Curai Health and Woebot Health bring their deep expertise in bringing high quality healthcare offerings that are made affordable and accessible by AI.
Curai Health was founded on the principle of making healthcare more accessible and affordable to people around the world and this partnership is a massive step into making that vision a reality. This is a big step in a moment where employers are eager for new benefits to keep employees healthy and stable at work, a growing number of Americans are demanding convenient and affordable virtual care options, and AI is proliferating into healthcare at a massive pace. It is an example of a real innovation that can drive material improvements in healthcare access. At no prior time in history have we been able to offer more accessible, better care at a lower price, but today, AI makes that possible and this partnership shows a model of how to break through to meet these demands at scale.
