Customer Congress 2023: Celebrating 25 Years of Empowering Data-Driven Healthcare

Industry leaders from across healthcare converged in Washington, D.C. this October for Inovalon’s annual Customer Congress. Attendees from over 100 organizations representing health plans, providers, specialty pharmacies, and life sciences joined the three-day conference, which featured dynamic keynote addresses from some of the industry’s top leaders in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and consumer engagement, followed by insightful breakout sessions from experts across healthcare.

In addition to a robust program, attendees were able to experience Inovalon’s leading software solutions first-hand and connect with colleagues and their Inovalon partners during the conference’s networking opportunities and special events, including a very special Customer Appreciation Dinner at the Library of Congress, also commemorating Inovalon’s 25-year anniversary.

The following is a summary of highlights from Inovalon’s 2023 Customer Congress.

Celebrating 25 years of innovation and data-driven healthcare

Inovalon CEO and Founder Dr. Keith Dunleavy opened the conference with an insightful keynote on the transformation of healthcare over the past 25 years through the lens of Inovalon’s origins – from a townhouse in Baltimore in 1998 to becoming one of the industry’s leading software companies enabling healthcare organizations to harness the power of data to improve patient outcomes and economics.

“To my shock and dismay, after all these years of computer science development, where I was doing AI development for pharmaceutical companies – I arrived at what I thought was one of the most amazing clinical facilities in the world, to learn that they weren’t using computers in healthcare. Computers were for storing or retrieving data, but there wasn’t any analysis. From this point, “go build Inovalon” became loud and clear.” – Dr. Keith Dunleavy

Exploring the growing opportunities of artificial intelligence in healthcare

The role of artificial intelligence in healthcare is growing rapidly, and it was a key topic throughout Customer Congress.

The AI revolution in medicine

Dr. Isaac Kohane from Harvard Medical School spoke about AI and its impact on healthcare, reminding us that you must have great data to build great AI models. Kohane shared one of the biggest areas of impact for AI in healthcare today is in reimbursement, considering how this is an exact math and the fact that clinicians need more support than ever in light of healthcare’s mass staffing shortage. In this area, he added that great data is not enough – it’s also important to consider how AI is making decisions.

“When you see your primary doctor, most of the time you can expect they have your best interest at heart. But we don’t actually know this about AI programs. Are they optimizing for the patient, for the utilities of the doctor, or for public health? All of these are legitimate decisions, but we actually don’t know which it is today. So, figuring out what goes into determining what is being optimized, and then making it clear to users what’s being optimized, is an important antecedent to all our regulation.” – Dr. Isaac Kohane

The emergence of generative AI for medicine

Dr. Peter Lee from Microsoft then shared some compelling ChatGPT demos (who knew there was a connection between Charlotte’s Web and the mission of Inovalon?) and talked about the importance of recognizing biases as we continue the AI journey.

“Generative AI has amazing capabilities and surprising limitations – limitations that have been learned from us. The training of generative AI was learned from our output, on the things that we’ve written, the things that we’ve said. Miraculously, it has learned not only to reason and communicate like us, but it has also learned some of our limtiations.” – Dr. Peter Lee

Applying data and AI to shape policy in the next era of healthcare

Dr. Michael Chernew from Harvard Medical School emphasized the increasingly information-driven nature of healthcare, the growing reliance of policy on data, and the need for good data to aid decision making.

“Data can be manipulated in a range of ways, so you have to design a risk adjustment model that avoids that incentive. And the core problem there, is that the organizations who are getting paid are also the ones providing the data. There’s a lot of really powerful tools to work with this data – but if the underlying data going in is being generated by organizations out of incentive, then you have to worry about what you can solve through the algorithms you use to process that data. And that becomes a big policymaker concern.” – Dr. Michael Chernew

AI advancements from Inovalon

Inovalon’s Chief Technology Officer, Rajesh Viswanathan, walked us through some of the ways Inovalon is leveraging AI in its software to better empower its customers, including enhancing eligibility verification, optimizing medication adherence, and supporting team operations with generative AI.

In addition, Rajesh highlighted a new collaboration between Inovalon and Amazon Web Services (AWS) to combine AWS’ AI products, including Amazon Comprehend Medical, with Inovalon’s AI/machine learning (ML) capabilities and deep subject matter expertise. While these collaborated capabilities are being developed for multiple applications across Inovalon’s broader product suite, Rajesh shared their current focus on using AI to improve efficiency by reducing the number of false positives identified during the medical record review process.

“This collaboration, at scale, is showing approximately 18% reduction in manual record reviews performed – a huge value back to our customers who are spending time, money, and effort on this process.” – Rajesh Viswanathan

Understanding consumer needs and impacting the full patient journey

Katya Andresen from The Cigna Group gave a memorable address that encouraged the audience to focus on solving the human problem and the importance of understanding the true needs of your customers – otherwise, the experience doesn’t matter.

“How to make sure that you are engaging your customers [begins with], make sure you are solving the problem that the customer really has… We’re at a really exciting moment right now and there’s all kinds of possibilities for what we can do, and technology is increasingly taking the place of human interactions and touchpoints. But it’s important to ask, ‘what are the moments we’re going to build around that are uniquely human?’ And it’s important to remember that it’s the humans, not the technology, that create innovation and that break things.” – Katya Andresen

Redefining care delivery across the healthcare ecosystem

Inovalon President Eron Kelly then brought this concept further to life during his session, as he told us about a patient, Diane, and her care journey with the power of Inovalon and our customers supporting every step of her care. From Diane’s interactions with her health plan to visits with her providers and coordination with her specialty pharmacy – Inovalon’s software helps shape Diane’s experience while providing her caregivers the data they need to deliver the right care – at the right time and in the right place.

“Throughout Customer Congress, we’ve been talking about the importance of data and its impact on healthcare – and that continues to be the core of Inovalon… to bring healthcare together, to solve problems in a patient-centric way. That’s why you’re all here; that’s why Inovalon is here.” – Eron Kelly

Showcasing innovation and delivering enhanced customer value

Inovalon’s breakout sessions are uniquely tailored to cover the latest industry trends and best practices, alongside actionable strategies for customers to leverage the greatest value from Inovalon’s vast range of software solutions.

Throughout the conference, attendees were also able to stop by product roundtables and demo stations with solutions experts showcasing Inovalon’s top software innovations for health plans, providers, pharmacies, and life sciences organizations. Here are the highlights:

• • Our Payer team introduced Converged Analytics Benchmarks, the only solution in the industry to provide monthly prospective benchmarks for national and state quality measurement
  • Our Provider team shared the exciting reporting capabilities of RCM Intelligence, a revenue cycle data visualization software that delivers end-to-end visibility across the revenue cycle
  • Our Pharmacy team showcased new, unified reporting now available across all ScriptMed^® modules
  • And customers across the care continuum got a glimpse of our exciting new deidentified data capabilities, including SDOH Market Insights

Customer Congress: On-demand!

2023 marked a significant milestone for Inovalon. With a quarter of a century behind us, this year’s Customer Congress was more than just an event – it was a celebration of legacy, vision, and the role of data-driven technology in shaping the future of healthcare.

And for a limited time, we’re continuing the excitement of Customer Congress. All keynotes and track sessions are available for on-demand viewing until November 30.

To catch up with your favorite moments or share a standout session with a colleague, access the on-demand experience now.