Over the past month, several healthcare companies have released artificial intelligence agents that offer patients and members personalized guidance and direct access to medical providers. Others seek to transform how agentic AI is developed and deployed.
Greenway's new agentic AI shop on AWS
To accelerate the creation of healthcare provider AI agents, Greenway Health and Amazon Web Services said that they aim to industrialize responsible AI innovation with an assembly line approach – co-creating and deploying agents in weeks instead of months.
The new offering – Agentic AI Factory – relies on standardized production and content moderation powered by Strands Agents, Amazon Bedrock and other tools and uses the Model Context Protocol to convert existing APIs into functional AI tools. Greenway is also using AWS HealthLake for its FHIR-based data infrastructure.
Greenway said it will double the development speed to create agents that automate healthcare practices and handle administrative tasks from patient registration to payments.
"Innovation is no longer an event; it's a rhythm," Phil Nick, Greenway's vice president and engineer, said in a statement. "This is the new pace of healthcare innovation."
"We believe technology should serve the clinician, not the other way around," added Richard Atkin, the company's CEO.
An AI innovation and responsible enablement, or AIRE, framework ensures tool transparency, traceability and governance, Greenway said. It will also ensure that provider agent results are explainable so that caregivers understand why the AI is making certain suggestions.
Amazon One Medical's Health AI goes live
The HIPAA-compliant Health AI assistant previously available in beta is now available to all Amazon One Medical members. It provides 24/7 personalized guidance based on patient history, test results, vaccinations and current medications, according to an announcement Wednesday.
While it might better prepare a patient for a provider conversation, Health AI doesn't replace a doctor when the patient is in need of professional medical advice, Amazon said.
Amazon said that it was co-developed with clinical leadership and contains multiple patient safety guardrails and indicators that distinguish between AI-generated information and medical provider guidance.
"Even as AI capabilities expand, the patient-clinician relationship – built over time and rooted in shared humanity – remains crucially important and irreplaceable," said Dr. Andrew Diamond, One Medical's chief medical officer.
Health AI will also escalate complex clinical situations to the company's care teams. It can recognize when symptoms or queries require, or would benefit from, human clinical judgment. Through it, members can connect with their One Medical providers through messaging, video calls or by scheduling an in-person appointment.
AskMary connects U.S. rural patients to care
Mary Technologies, which focuses on primary care in underserved communities, announced last week that its AI-powered assistant, AskMary, is now available in the U.S.
The platform can assess symptoms and review health information, and offers access to licensed physicians to help reduce unnecessary emergency room visits, the company said.
"AskMary combines the speed of [AI] with the clinical judgment of real physicians," Felix Davis, Mary Technologies chief executive officer, said in the announcement. "Patients are not left on their own after an AI interaction. A licensed doctor oversees care until medical risks are addressed."
Certified medical doctors on the platform provide patients with consultations and follow-up. Mary Tech said every user who requests physician care is connected to a licensed doctor regardless of their location.
The tool, already deployed in Africa, has expanded healthcare access in rural areas.
"Healthcare should be accessible, intelligent and human-centered," Davis said. "AskMary is built to close the gap between AI innovation and real medical care."
'Mind-body-wallet' AI
Last month, Included Health, which offers personalized healthcare, released an intelligent AI assistant to give patients expert medical opinions from leading academic medical centers and refer them to virtual care and high-quality local providers, the company said.
Dot is powered by claims data, benefits and coverage information, utilization and cost patterns, proprietary physician-quality models and insights tied to social determinants of health, according to the announcement.
It helps patients navigate their health plan coverage and costs, and in the future, will suggest preventive screenings, engage at-risk individuals and support adherence to care plans.
And as a channel for the company's Healthy Days program, it will aim to help members understand how their actions impact physical and mental health over time.
"It's one thing to use AI to drive efficiency in broken systems – it's another to use it to reimagine how people can get the very best from healthcare," Dr. Ami Parekh, Included Health's chief health officer, said in the statement.
"Yes, Dot is answering questions and solving problems, but in our model, Dot is part of a team that's building a new era of trust and opportunities for better healthcare."
Elevance Health expands virtual assistant
An AI-powered virtual assistant in the Sydney Health app aims to help Elevance Health's commercial plan members more quickly understand coverage, costs and care options, according to the company.
"At Elevance Health, the member experience is at the heart of everything we do," Anita Allemand, chief growth officer, said in the company's announcement last month. "People deserve clear, trusted guidance when making healthcare decisions."
With the conversational tool, the payer can break down estimated costs of a procedure by physician – "without the frustration of navigating multiple menus or systems," she noted.
The company said it also plans to expand access to the virtual assistant to its Medicare members later this year.
Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.
